33oofc6  bp  &tmo  JFrancfce 


GERMAN  IDEALS  OF  TO-DAY.  Houghton, 
Mifflin  &  Co.     1907 

HANDBOOK  OF  THE  GERMANIC  MU- 
SEUM OF  HARVARD  UNI  VERSITY.  Pub- 
lished by  the  University.     Cambridge,  1906 

A  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN  LITERATURE, 
AS  DETERMINED  BY  SOCIAL  FORCES. 
New  York,  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  London, 
George  Bell  &  Sons.     1901 

GLIMPSES  OF  MODERN  GERMAN  CUL- 
TURE.    Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.     1898 

SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  GERMAN  LITERA- 
TURE.    Henry  Holt  &  Co.     1896 


HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  COMPANY 
Boston  and  New  York 


GERMAN   IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 


FROM    KLINGER'S   STATUE   OF    BEETHOVEN 


GERMAN  IDEALS  OF 
TO-DAY 


AND 


OTHER    ESSAYS  ON   GERMAN    CULTURE 


KUNO    FRANCKE 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 

m>t  fitoer£i&e  pre?*,  CambriDge 

1907 


COPYRIGHT  1907   BY  KUNO   FRANCKE 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


Published  April  igoj 


Fl 


TO 
MY    BROTHER    HUGO 

WHOSE    LOVE    HAS    PROTECTED    ME    FROM    EARLY  YOUTH 
AND  TO 

FRIEDRICH    PAULSEN 

WHOSE    FRIENDSHIP    HAS    GUIDED    AND    INSPIRED    THIRTY 

YEARS   OF   MY  LIFE   THIS    LITTLE    BOOK    IS 

AFFECTIONATELY    DEDICATED 


HEIMATGEFUHL 

Die  Heide  bluht.    Ein  endlos  Flimmern, 
Ein  Summen,  Briiten  weit  und  breit; 
Am  fernen  Horizonte  schimmern 
Die  Diinen,  still  und  traumbeschneit. 
Die  Heide  blunt.     Wie  Purpurquellen, 
Aus  braunem  Sande  stromt's  hervor  ; 
Und  tausendfache  Farbenwellen 
Erzittern  uberm  dunklen  Moor. 
Die  Heide  bliiht.    Aus  dunklen  Tiefen 
Ziehn  Sehnsuchtstimmen  durchs  Gemiit, 
Als  ob  sie  meine  Seele  riefen 
Zur  Ewigkeit.      Die  Heide  bliiht. 


Ofc 


PREFACE 

The  essays  and  sketches  brought  together 
in  this  book  deal  with  what  may  be  called  the 
higher  life  of  modern  Germany.  For  even 
in  so  far  as  they  are  concerned  with  earlier 
epochs  of  literary  or  artistic  development, 
they  consider  these  earlier  phases  only  in  their 
relation  to  the  life  of  the  present.  Taken  as 
a  whole,  they  form  perhaps  a  slight  contribu- 
tion to  the  psychology  of  the  German  national 
mind. 

The  temper  of  these  papers  is  frankly  pro- 
pagandist. They  wish  to  arouse  sympathy 
with  German  views  of  public  life,  education, 
literature,  and  art ;  and  they  try  to  set  forth 
some  German  achievements  in  various  fields 
of  higher  activity.  The  author  hopes,  how- 
ever, that  love  for  his  native  land  has  not 
blinded  him  to  shortcomings  and  defects  in- 
herent in  the  German  character. 


viii  PREFACE 

All  of  the  papers,  except  the  last  one,  have 
been  published  previously,  —  four  of  them  in 
the  Atlantic  Monthly,  seven  in  the  Nation,  one 
in  the  International  Monthly,  one  in  the  Inter- 
national Quarterly,  one  in  the  Outlook,  and  one 
in  the  Boston  Transcript.  The  verses  accom- 
panying the  dedication  were  first  printed  in  the 
Berlin  Weekly,  Die  Woche.  To  all  these  peri- 
odicals the  author  is  indebted  for  the  privilege 
of  republishing  his  contributions. 

The  head  of  Klinger's  Beethoven,  which 
forms  the  frontispiece  of  the  book,  is  taken 
from  a  photograph  of  the  statue  published  by 
E.  A.  Seemann  in  Leipzig.  It  seems  to  ex- 
press with  particular  emphasis  and  power  the 
concentrated  striving  of  contemporary  Ger- 
many for  the  vision  of  eternal  things.  A  few 
remarks  about  this  greatest  creation  of  modern 
German  sculpture  will  be  found  on  pages  43 
and  210. 

K.  F. 

Harvard  University,  March,  1907. 


CONTENTS 

I.    German  Ideals  of  To-Day  3 
II.    Three  Anniversary  Addresses 

1.  Goethe's  Message  to  America  53 

2.  Schiller's  Message  to  Modern  Life  74 

3.  Emerson  and  German  Personality  93 

III.  The  Evolutionary  Trend  of  Ger- 

man Literary  Criticism  129 

IV.  The  Inner  Life  in  German  Sculp- 

ture 193 

V.    The  Study  of  National  Culture  215 
VI.    Sketches  of  Contemporary  German 
Letters 

1.  Hauptmann's  Fuhrmann  Henschel  243 

2.  Sudermann's  Die  drei  Reiherfedern  249 

3.  Paulsen's  Philosophia  Militans  257 

4.  Herman  Grimm — An  Obituary  268 

5.  Hauptmann's  Michael  Kramer  275 

6.  Hauptmann's  Der  Arme  Heinrich  282 

7.  The  Struggle  for  Individuality  on 

the  German  Stage  293 

8.  Widmann's  Der  Heilige   und  die 

Tiere  304 

VII.    The  Future  of  German  Literature  329 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 


GERMAN   IDEALS   OF  TO-DAY 

One  of  the  most  interesting  fragments  that 
have  been  preserved  to  us  from  Schiller's 
literary  workshop,  is  a  Hymn  to  Germany 
which  occupied  the  poet's  mind  during  the 
last  years  of  his  life.  This  Hymn  never  passed 
the  stage  of  sketches,  partly  in  verse,  partly 
in  prose  ;  but  even  these  sketches  give  us  an 
idea  of  the  noble  conception  of  the  whole. 
Apparently,  Schiller  wanted  to  proclaim  the 
greatness  of  Germany  in  the  midst  of  her  na- 
tional disasters ;  he  wanted  to  tell  his  people, 
threatened  in  its  very  existence  by  the  Napo- 
leonic invasion,  that  there  was  still  a  hope  left 
for  it ;  he  wanted  to  contrast  the  brute  force 
of  military  prowess  with  the  eternal  achieve- 
ments of  literature  and  art.  "  May  Germany," 
—  thus  runs  the  beginning  of  this  sketch,  — 
"may  Germany,  at  a  moment  when  she  issues 
without  glory  from  a  terrible  war,  when  two 
arrogant  nations  have  set  their  feet  upon  her 
neck,  when  the  victor  rules  her  fate,  —  may 


4        GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

she  feel  herself?  May  the  German  take  pride 
in  his  name?  May  he  lift  his  head,  and  with 
firm  step  appear  in  the  company  of  nations  ? 
Yes,  he  may.  He  has  been  unsuccessful  in  the 
fight ;  but  that  which  makes  his  worth  he  has 
not  lost.  German  Empire  and  German  people 
are  two  different  things.  Bereft  of  political 
power,  the  German  has  found  his  worth  in 
another  sphere,  a  sphere  of  his  own  ;  and  even 
if  the  Empire  were  to  crumble  to  pieces,  Ger- 
man greatness  would  remain  unimpaired. 

Das  ist  nicht  des  Deutschen  Grosse, 

Obzusiegen  mit  dem  Schwert  ; 

In  das  Geisterreich  zu  dringen, 

Vorurteile  zu  besiegen, 

Mannlich  mit  dem  Wahn  zu  kriegen, 

Das  ist  seines  Eifers  wert. 

To  him,  the  German,  the  highest  destiny  has 
been  set.  He  has  been  chosen  by  the  World- 
Spirit,  in  the  midst  of  temporary  struggles,  to 
devote  his  work  to  the  eternal  structure  of 
human  culture,  to  give  permanence  to  what  the 
fleeting  moment  brings.  Therefore  he  has  as- 
similated and  made  his  own  what  other  na- 
tions have  produced.  Whatever  came  to  life 
in  other  ages  and  countries,  and  disappeared 
again,  he  has  stored    up,  —  the  treasures  of 


GERMAN  IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY       5 

centuries  are  his.  Every  people  has  its  day  ; 
the  day  of  the  German  is  the  harvest  of  all 
time." 

How  strangely  out  of  date  do  these  words, 
born  from  a  patriot's  grief  over  the  political 
humiliation  of  his  people,  appear  at  a  time 
when  "  German  nation  "  and  "  German  Em- 
pire "  are  happily  not  any  longer  contradic- 
tory terms ;  when  through  extraordinary  mil- 
itary achievements,  as  well  as  through  a 
wise  and  far-seeing  statesmanship,  the  political 
power  of  Germany  has  been  more  firmly' estab- 
lished than  ever  before;  when  German  com- 
merce and  industry  are  competing  for  the  front 
rank  among  nations  in  every  quarter  of  the 
globe.  The  question  which  confronts  us  of 
to-day  is  precisely  the  opposite  from  the  one 
which  confronted  Schiller  and  his  contempo- 
raries. Then  the  question  was:  Will  the  high 
state  of  intellectual  refinement,  of  literary  and 
artistic  culture,  reached  by  the  educated  few 
react  upon  the  masses  and  bring  about  a  new 
era  of  popular  energy?  Will  the  striving  of 
the  German  mind  for  universally  human  and 
eternal  values,  for  enlightenment,  for  spiritu- 
ality, for  cosmopolitanism,  result  in  a  height- 
ening of  national  power  also,  and  in  a  revival 


6        GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

of  public  activity  for  material  ends  ?  Now  the 
question  is  :  Will  the  new  era  of  popular  pros- 
perity and  national  self-assertion  result  in  a 
reawakening  of  spiritual  strivings  also?  Will 
it  give  a  new  impetus  to  the  longing  for  eter- 
nal possessions?  Will  it  lead  to  a  nobler  con- 
ception of  humanity,  to  a  deeper  faith  in  the 
Infinite,  to  a  more  exalted  view  of  the  mean- 
ing of  life  and  the  mission  of  art?  Will  it,  in 
short,  bring  about  a  new  era  of  idealism  ? 

The  following  observations,  gathered  dur- 
ing a  recent  visit  in  the  land  of  my  birth,  may 
perhaps  serve  as  an  attempt  to  analyze  the 
physiognomy  of  contemporary  German  life 
from  this  point  of  view. 

Even  a  first  impression  of  the  external  con- 
ditions of  the  Germany  of  to-day  must  con- 
vince the  unprejudiced  that  German  progress 
of  the  last  thirty  years  has  not  been  confined 
to  industrial  and  commercial  development. 
Not  since  the  days  of  the  Renaissance  and 
the  Reformation  has  there  been  a  time  when 
the  outward  aspect  of  the  country  bespoke 
such  ardent  life,  such  intense  activity  in  every 
domain  of  national  aspirations,  as  now.  Even 
the  most  casual  observer  cannot  fail  to  be 
impressed   with   the  picture  of  healthfulness, 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY       7 

power,  orderliness,  and  enlightened  citizen- 
ship, which  meets  the  eye  of  the  traveler  on 
every  hand,  on  every  square  mile  of  German 
soil,  north  and  south,  east  and  west.  These 
flourishing,  well-kept  farms  and  estates,  these 
thriving  villages,  these  beautiful,  carefully  re- 
plenished forests,  these  bustling  cities  teeming 
with  a  well-fed  and  well-behaved  population, 
these  proud  city  halls,  stately  court  houses, 
theatres,  and  museums  rising  everywhere, 
these  admirable  means  of  communication, 
these  model  arrangements  for  healthy  recrea- 
tion and  amusement,  —  how  plainly  all  this 
testifies  to  a  remarkably  high  state  of  public 
consciousness  !  This  magnificent  army,  with 
its  manly  discipline  and  its  high  standard  of 
professional  honor  (occasional  excesses  of 
youthful  Hotspurs  notwithstanding),  these 
universities  and  technical  schools,  with  their 
joyousness  of  student  life,  and  their  earnest- 
ness and  freedom  of  scientific  investigation, 
this  orderly  management  of  political  meetings 
and  demonstrations,  this  sober  determination 
and  effective  organization  of  the  laboring 
classes  in  their  fight  for  social  betterment, 
this  respectful  and  attentive  attitude,  even  of 
the  masses,  toward  all  forms  of  art, — what 


8       GERMAN    IDEALS   OF   TO-DAY 

unmistakable  proofs  of  a  wonderfully  organ- 
ized collective  will,  of  an  instinctive  reaching 
out  toward  higher  forms  of  national  exis- 
tence ! 

It  has  been  said,  and  not  without  some  rea- 
son, that  the  distinguishing  quality  of  Ameri- 
can patriotism,  as  compared  with  Old-World 
sentiment,  consisted  in  this,  that  it  was  pre- 
eminently directed  toward  the  future.  The 
absence  of  a  long  historical  tradition,  as  well 
as  the  gigantic  tasks  pressing  in  upon  a  people 
still  in  the  making,  undoubtedly  accentuate 
this  forward  leaning  of  American  patriotic  sen- 
timent. But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  think 
that  German  patriotism  of  to-day  was  preemi- 
nently looking  backward,  that  it  was  chiefly 
concerned  with  the  maintenance  of  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  past,  that  it  lacked  the  outlook 
into  an  ideal  future.  Germany,  too,  is  a  young 
nation;  here,  too,  a  new  order  of  things,  new 
tasks,  new  ideals,  are  forcing  themselves  upon 
the  national  consciousness  ;  here,  too,  the  sub- 
stance of  patriotism,  if  not  its  form,  is  con- 
cerned with  the  working  out  of  the  problems 
of  to-morrow. 

Let  us  consider  some  of  the  ideals  which 
consciouslv  or  unconsciouslv  dominate  the  in- 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY        9 

tellectual  and  moral  world  of  the  German  of 
to-day,  shaping  his  conception  of  what  the 
Germany  of  the  future  is  to  be. 


The  average  American,  if  asked  to  define 
his  political  creed,  would  probably  without 
much  hesitancy  sum  up  his  answer  in  the  one 
word,  Liberty.  The  German  would  find  it  less 
easy  to  give  a  generally  acceptable  answer  to 
this  question.  His  answer  would  vary  accord- 
ing to  the  variety  of  fundamental  political 
demands  contained  in  the  programme  of  the 
party  with  which  he  might  be  affiliated.  The 
Conservative  would  maintain  that  a  strong 
monarchy  was  the  only  power  to  whose  guid- 
ance the  ship  of  state  might  safely  be  commit- 
ted ;  and  the  principal  safeguard  of  a  strong 
monarchy  he  would  see  in  the  army.  He 
would  further  declare  a  close  alliance  between 
throne  and  altar,  between  the  State  and  the 
Church,  to  be  absolutely  necessary  for  the 
maintenance  of  public  morals;  and  as  to  gov- 
ernmental maxims,  he  would  have  no  hesita- 
tion in  giving  preference  to  the  methods  of 
paternalism  and  state  regulation.  The  Liberal 
would  probably  point  to  the  English  Consti- 


io     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

tution  as  his  ideal  of  government;  he  would 
speak  of  the  necessity  of  parliamentary  gov- 
ernment, he  would  deplore  the  impotence  of 
the  present  parties,  he  would  deride  militarism, 
clericalism,  and  protectionism,  and  he  would 
declaim  on  the  beauties  of  free  thought  and 
free  trade.  The  Centrist  would  above  all  in- 
veigh against  the  principle  of  state  omnipo- 
tence, he  would  speak  of  "a  free  Church  in  a 
free  State,"  he  would  exalt  the  work  done  by 
the  Catholic  Church  for  the  moral  and  econo- 
mic improvement  of  the  working  classes,  and 
he  would  demand  the  admission  of  Catholic 
thought  and  scholarship  on  equal  terms  with 
Protestant  science  in  the  higher  schools  and 
universities.  The  Socialist,  finally,  —  not  to 
speak  of  a  number  of  other,  ephemeral  par- 
ties and  fractions  of  parties,  such  as  the  Pan- 
Germans,  the  Anti-Semites,  and  so  on, — the 
Socialist  would  squarely  come  out  for  a  repub- 
lic as  the  ideal  form  of  government ;  he  would 
condemn  the  whole  existing  order  of  things 
as  utterly  corrupt  and  untenable ;  he  would 
wish  to  replace  the  standing  army  by  a  militia 
system,  abolish  the  established  Church,  na- 
tionalize the  great  industries,  and  what  not. 
In  short,  it  would  seem  from  such  an  inquirv 


GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     n 

as  though  there  was  a  great  chaos  of  political 
opinions  furiously  at  war  with  each  other,  as 
though  an  agreement  on  some  few  funda- 
mental tenets,  irrespective  of  disagreement  in 
matters  of  practical  expediency,  was  an  impos- 
sibility in  German  politics. 

Closer  questioning,  however,  would  reveal 
the  fact  that  the  picture  of  the  future  hover- 
ing before  these  representatives  of  the  various 
German  parties  was,  after  all,  not  so  radically 
different  as  it  first  appeared. 

In  the  first  place,  the  headlines  in  the  va- 
rious party  catechisms  —  in  Germany  as  well 
as  elsewhere  —  are  for  the  most  part  not  much 
more  than  hypnotic  formulae  designated  to 
catch  the  eye  and  to  delude  the  party-follower 
into  a  comfortable  state  of  sleepy  assurance 
that  he  believes  these  things.  In  reality,  no 
sane  Conservative  would  deny  that,  if  the 
monarchy  had  no  other  justification  for  its  ex- 
istence than  that  founded  upon  bayonets  and 
guns,  it  would  not  be  worth  while  for  the 
people  to  maintain  so  costly  an  institution  ; 
and  as  to  the  reestablishment  of  patriarchal 
methods  of  government  without  popular  con- 
trol, that  is  a  pious  wish  which  may  swell  the 
breast  of  a  few  fanatics,  such  as  the  notorious 


12     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

Count  Piickler,  but  the  practical  execution  of 
such  wishes  would  involve  the  perpetrator  in 
serious  conflicts  with  the  courts,  or  land  him 
in  an  asylum.  On  the  other  hand,  the  record 
of  the  Liberal  party — which,  by  the  way,  for 
the  moment  has  almost  been  effaced  in  na- 
tional as  well  as  in  state  politics  J  —  has  been 
such  that  one  may  well  doubt  its  ability  to 
convert  into  constructive  achievements  its 
doctrinaire  programme  of  self-government  and 
civil  rights.  Its  course  has  been,  in  the  main, 
negative  ;  and  on  more  than  one  occasion, 
especially  during  the  days  of  the  "  Kultur- 
kampf,"  it  has  gone  back  on  its  own  princi- 
ples by  making  itself  a  tool  of  coercive  legis- 
lation. As  to  the  Centrist  party,  its  motto, 
"  a  free  Church  in  a  free  State,"  is  in  reality 
only  a  euphemism  for  "  the  State  controlled 
by  the  Church,"  and  would  disappear  from 
its  programme  the  moment  the  State  showed 
the  slightest  intention  of  carrying  it  out,  that 
is,  of  disestablishing  the  Church.  And  lastly, 
the  Socialist  talk  about  a  German  republic  is 

1  Since  this  was  written,  the  new  elections  for  the  Reichs- 
tag have  taken  place.  They  seem  to  indicate  a  revival  of 
Liberalism  throughout  Germany;  let  us  hope  that  it  will  be 
Liberalism  ot  the  practical,  common-sense  kind. 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     13 

so  manifestly  a  mere  catchword,  or  at  best  so 
shadowy  a  dream  of  immature  brains,  that  it 
need  not  be  seriously  considered. 

While,  then,  a  good  many  of  the  apparent 
differences  and  contradictory  principles  of  the 
various  parties  turn  out  to  be,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  mere  surface  ebullition  and  froth,  it  will 
be  found  that  all  German  parties  have  one  es- 
sential thing  in  common,  a  strong  confidence 
in  government  supervision.  This  confidence 
is  well  founded,  historically.  By  whatever  ill- 
sounding  name  one  may  call  it,  —  bureaucracy, 
officialdom,  governmental  caste,  or  what  not, 
—  the  fact  remains  that  the  government  ser- 
vice, both  civil  and  military,  has  during  the 
last  two  hundred  years  been  the  chief  task- 
master of  the  German  people  in  its  evolution 
to  national  greatness,  the  strongest  force  in  the 
gradual  working  out  of  an  enlightened  public 
opinion.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  the  gov- 
ernment service  of  any  other  country,  except 
possibly  that  of  modern  Japan,  has  been  so 
unremittingly  and  steadfastly  committed  to  the 
principle  of  public  welfare  as  the  only  law  of 
conduct  for  a  public  servant,  as  that  of  Prussia 
and  those  German  states  which  have  taken  the 
keynote  of  their  administration  from  Prussia. 


i4      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

The  idea  that  a  public  office  is  a  public  trust, 
and  that  efficiency  and  trustworthiness  are 
the  only  indispensable  prerequisites  for  hold- 
ing office,  has  come  to  be  something  so  self- 
evident  to  the  German  mind  that  it  needs  no 
place  in  any  party  platform.  It  is  tacitly  ad- 
mitted by  all  parties,  and,  although  it  would  be 
too  much  to  say  that  in  point  of  fact  the  Ger- 
man administration  of  to-day  is  strictly  non- 
partisan, it  certainly  must  be  said  that  this  is 
the  principle  to  which  it  tries  to  live  up. 

The  recent  conflict  of  the  Prussian  Ministry 
of  Education  with  a  large  part  of  the  Prussian 
student  body,  as  well  as  with  not  a  few  gov- 
erning bodies  of  the  universities  and  techni- 
cal schools,  is  a  good  illustration  of  this  fact. 
During  the  last  decades,  Catholic  clubs  have 
had  a  great  ascendency  in  the  German  univer- 
sities. These  clubs  admit  as  members  only 
young  men  who  regularly  perform  their  reli- 
gious duties,  and  are  in  every  respect  faith- 
ful sons  of  the  Church.  They  are  affiliated 
with  the  Centrist  party,  and  make  no  secret  of 
their  desire  to  make  propaganda  for  its  policy. 
Naturally,  they  have  brought  upon  themselves 
the  hatred  and  contempt  of  the  larger  part  of 
the  student  body,  which  is  still  dominated  by 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     15 

free  thought  and  decidedly  anti-clerical  feel- 
ings. When,  some  time  ago,  the  Catholic  Club 
of  the  Polytechnic  at  Hannover  demanded 
an  official  representation  in  the  General  Stu- 
dents' Committee,  this  demand  was  refused 
by  the  other  student  organizations,  on  the 
specious  plea  that  the  Catholic  clubs  were  es- 
sentially opposed  to  the  principle  of  academic 
freedom,  and  disdained  fellowship  with  the 
rest  of  the  student  body.  Strangely  enough, 
the  Faculty  coincided  with  this  view,  and 
other  polytechnics  and  universities  followed 
suit.  The  Ministry  of  Education,  however, 
applying  the  principle  of  non-partisan  admin- 
istration, sided  with  the  Catholic  clubs,  and 
refused  to  sanction  their  exclusion  from  the 
General  Students'  Committee.  Thereupon  a 
storm  of  indignation  throughout  the  Prussian 
universities,  a  flood  of  high-sounding  talk 
about  freedom  of  science,  about  the  defense 
of  modern  civilization  against  Romanism  and 
mediaevalism,  mass  meeting  after  mass  meet- 
ing filled  with  denunciations  against  the  "  re- 
actionary "  government.  But  the  outcome 
undoubtedly  will  be  a  triumph  of  the  non- 
partisan view  of  the  government ;  and  the 
only  pity  is  that  it  does  not  seem  at  present 


16      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

likely  that  the  same  view  will  be  maintained 
by  the  government  to  guard  the  rights  of 
other  student  bodies,  less  acceptable  to  the 
powers  that  be, —  for  instance,  Socialist  socie- 
ties. 

But  to  return  to  our  main  question,  the 
question  whether  there  is  one  political  ideal 
uniting  the  great  diversity  of  German  parties 
in  a  common  aim.  The  traditional  non-par- 
tisan methods  of  German  administration,  we 
saw,  have  brought  it  about  that  all  German 
parties  rely  much  more  readily  than  is  the 
case  in  most  other  countries  on  government 
action.  This  widespread  trust  in  government 
action,  on  its  part,  has  brought  it  about  that 
the  government  is  looked  upon,  much  more 
generally  than  in  England  or  America,  as  the 
great  harmonizer  and  arbitrator  between  con- 
flicting interests.  And  this  view  of  the  function 
of  government,  in  its  turn,  has  forced  into  the 
very  centre  of  political  life  a  demand  which  in 
other  countries  is  more  commonly  based  on 
moral  and  economic  grounds, —  the  demand 
for  social  justice.  I  believe  I  am  not  mistaken 
if  I  designate  the  idea  of  social  justice  as  the 
peculiarly  German  ideal  of  political  life. 
That  the  Socialist  party  should   have  been 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     17 

the  first  to  proclaim  this  ideal  is  in  the  nature 
of  things  ;  for  it  represents  the  cause  of  the 
masses  to  whom,  all  over  the  globe,  social  jus- 
tice is  so  largely  denied,  the  disinherited  and 
the  downtrodden.  But  it  is  by  no  means  an 
ideal  of  the  downtrodden  only,  it  is  an  ideal 
inspiring  the  best  minds  of  every  party  and 
class  ;  it  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  very  make-up 
of  the  people.  The  Conservative  is  bound  to 
it  by  the  certainty  that  only  in  rallying  the 
masses  about  the  Imperial  standard  can  the 
monarchy  in  the  long  run  be  saved.  The  Cen- 
trist cannot  escape  the  conviction  that  social 
justice  is  one  of  the  foremost  tenets  of  Chris- 
tian teachings.  The  Liberal  is  forced  to  ac- 
knowledge that  without  this  principle  there 
is  no  really  enlightened  civilization.  And  the 
common  man  throughout  the  land  feels  in- 
stinctively that  Germany,  of  all  countries,  is 
the  one  where  this  idea  is  destined  to  play 
the  leading  part  in  shaping  the  future  of  the 
nation. 

How  threadbare  and  antiquated  most  of  the 
other  ideals  have  come  to  be  that  held  their 
sway  during  the  last  one  hundred  years ! 
How  few  of  those  that  swelled  the  breasts  of 
Schiller  and  his   contemporaries  are  a  living 


1 8      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

force  to-day  !  The  brotherhood  of  nations  ? 
Germany  has  had  every  reason  during  the  last 
two  or  three  generations  to  doubt  the  sin- 
cerity of  those  who  make  it  a  business  to 
declaim  about  humanity  and  the  peace  of  the 
world.  Every  step  which  she  has  made  toward 
national  unity  and  consolidation  has  been  con- 
tested by  her  good  friends  and  neighbors : 
the  Empire  had  to  be  welded  together  in  a 
bloody  war  brought  about  by  Napoleonic 
intrigues;  and  now  the  beginnings  of  Ger- 
man sea  power  are  grudgingly  watched,  de- 
nounced, and  as  much  as  possible,  thwarted, 
by  commercial  rivals  all  over  the  world.  No, 
the  brotherhood  of  nations  has  no  particular 
charms  for  the  German  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury. Enlightenment?  The  time  has  long 
passed  when  this  word  thrilled  the  elite  of  the 
nation  beyond  any  other.  We  have  come  to 
see  that,  priceless  a  possession  as  intellectual 
enlightenment  is,  it  is  after  all  not  without  its 
dangers,  and  easily  leads  the  masses  to  mate- 
rialism and  moral  indifference.  Freedom  ?  To 
be  sure,  the  mission  of  freedom  is  endless, 
and  there  is  plenty  of  work  left  for  her  in 
contemporary  Germany,  as  everywhere,  par- 
ticularly in  religious  matters;  but  it  would  be 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     19 

absurd  to  deny  that  the  German  Constitution 
of  to-day  allows  to  the  individual  an  amount 
of  political  freedom  undreamed-of  a  hundred 
years  ago,  and  larger  than  the  great  majority 
of  individuals  are  capable  of  carrying.  Even 
to  the  Socialist,  freedom  is  not  any  longer  the 
one  magic  formula  to  conjure  with ;  what  he  de- 
mands is  not  freedom,  but  justice.  National- 
ity ?  To  the  great  mass  of  Germans  this  word 
would  appeal  more  than  either  human  bro- 
therhood or  enlightenment  or  freedom.  And 
yet  even  this  word  does  not  any  longer  ex- 
press a  widespread,  elemental  longing :  it  ex- 
presses rather  satisfaction  at  the  fulfillment  of 
national  aspirations,  pride  at  national  achieve- 
ments; it  has  ceased  to  be  an  ideal.  The 
question :  "  Was  ist  des  Deutschen  Vater- 
land?"  does  not  any  longer  make  the  Ger- 
man heart  beat  faster.  Industrial  progress  and 
supremacy  ?  Certainly,  this  is  a  thing  for 
which  thousands  and  thousands  of  heads  and 
hands  are  ceaselessly  at  work,  a  goal  of  ambi- 
tion hovering  before  the  keenest  and  best 
trained  minds  of  the  country.  But  how  could 
one  forget  that  this  very  progress  is  often 
enough  a  fetich  to  which  thousands  of  living 
beings  are  sacrificed,  a  cancerous  growth  prey- 


20      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

ing  upon  the  nation's  health?  How  could  in- 
dustrial progress  ever  acquire  the  dignity  of  a 
national  ideal  ? 

Place  by  the  side  of  all  these  ideals  and  ob- 
jects of  ambition  the  words  "  social  justice," 
and  you  will  see  at  once  that  this  phrase  ex- 
presses better  than  any  other  the  ideal  content 
of  German  patriotism  of  to-day.  In  no  other 
country  has  the  state  the  same  obligation  to 
control  the  exercise  of  social  justice,  or  the 
same  capacity  for  maintaining  this  control,  as 
in  Germany.  A  government  which  strains 
every  nerve  of  the  people  for  public  purposes, 
which  takes  some  of  the  best  years-  from  the 
life  of  every  citizen  for  military  service,  which 
at  every  important  point  of  the  individual's 
career  impresses  upon  him  his  connection  with 
the  state  and  his  responsibility  to  the  state, 
such  a  government  cannot  possibly  avoid  the 
responsibility  of  acting  as  the  great  social 
peacemaker,  as  the  mediator  between  capital 
and  labor,  as  the  advocate  of  the  weak,  as  the 
support  of  the  needy;  and  it  is  in  the  nature 
of  things  that  in  exercising  this  duty  it  will 
more  and  more  be  drawn  into  the  management 
of  the  great  industries  on  its  own  account,  and 
will  more  and  more  come  to  be  the  great  em- 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY     21 

ployer  of  labor.  That  the  German  govern- 
ment is  fully  aware  of  this  solemn  obligation, 
and  is  to  an  extraordinary  degree  capable  of 
fulfilling  it,  is  amply  proven  on  the  one  hand 
by  the  gigantic  undertaking  of  state  insur- 
ance of  workingmen  against  accidents,  inval- 
idism, and  old  age,  and  on  the  other  by  the  re- 
markable success  which  has  attended  the  pass- 
ing of  the  German  railways  into  government 
control.  Now,  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  such 
an  enormous  social  and  industrial  powervested 
in  a  partisan  government  would  inevitably  re- 
sult in  the  worst  form  of  tyranny  and  oppres- 
sion ;  only  a  non-partisan  government  is  cap- 
able of  wielding  this  power  for  the  cause  of 
social  justice.  The  great  question,  then,  the 
great  desideratum  of  German  political  life,  is, 
not  the  introduction  of  the  English  principle 
of  parliamentary  government,  the  triumph  of 
majority  rule,  but  the  further  development  of 
the  historic  German  principle  of  nonpartisan 
government,  the  building  up  of  a  government 
which,  while  recruited  from  all  the  various 
parties,  will,  in  reality  as  well  as  in  principle, 
be  raised  above  all  parties,  and  serve  still  more 
exclusively  than  it  does  now  the  one  great 
cause  of  the  common  weal.    Is  it  too  much  to 


22      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

hope  that  the  German  government  of  the 
future  will  habitually  unite  in  itself  the  best 
minds  of  the  Conservative,  the  Liberal,  the 
Centrist,  and  the  Socialist  parties,  and  thereby 
rob  party  life  of  its  present  bitterness  and  im- 
placability ? '  Does  not  the  whole  trend  of  Ger- 
man political  history,  with  its  traditional  aver- 
sion to  the  rule  of  parliamentary  majorities, 
and  with  its  traditional  insistence  on  a  stable, 
public-spirited,  and  highly  trained  civil  service, 
point  in  this  direction  ?  Is  not  this  a  worthy 
aim  of  patriotic  aspirations  ?  And  will  not  this 
complete  carrying  out  of  non-partisan  gov- 
ernment for  the  sake  of  social  justice,  the  es- 
tablishment of  perpetual  party  compromises 
within  the  executive  itself,  be  an  important  and 
highly  instructive  addition  to  the  history  of 
political  experiments,  and  enrich  the  forms  of 
government  by  a  new  and  peculiarly  valuable 
type  ?  Indeed,  here  is  a  task  before  Germany, 
for  the  successful  solution  of  which  all  nations 
will  owe  her  a  debt  of  gratitude;  here  is  a  new 
chance  for  the  Hohenzollern  dynasty  of  prov- 

1  The  necessary  prerequisite  for  such  a  union  of  all  par- 
ties within  the  ministry  would,  of  course,  be  the  acceptance 
by  the  Socialists  of  the  monarchy  as  the  corner-stone  of  the 
German  Constitution. 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     23 

ing  to  the  world  that  its  historic  motto  of 
"  Suum  cuique  "  is  not  an  empty  word,  and 
of  demonstrating  anew  its  wonderful  power  of 
uniting  faithfulness  to  inherited  traditions  with 
keenest  grasp  of  the  problems  of  the  future. 


If  social  justice  may  be  called  the  political 
ideal  of  contemporary  Germany,  social  effi- 
ciency may  be  called  the  fundamental  demand 
of  the  new  German  education. 

The  times  are  long  since  passed  when  schol- 
arly culture  could  still  be  considered  the  chief 
or  even  the  only  aim  of  higher  training.  The 
demands  of  practical  life  have  become  so  man- 
ifold and  so  pressing  that  it  has  become 
absolutely  imperative  for  the  school  to  adapt 
itself  to  these  variegated  needs.  Hence  the 
practical  tendency  of  what  is  called  the  School 
Reform,  a  movement  initiated  in  theory  by 
such  men  as  Paulsen,  Rein,  and  other  univer- 
sity professors,  directed  into  legislative  chan- 
nels, at  the  instigation  of  the  Emperor,  chiefly 
by  the  Prussian  Ministry  of  Education  under 
the  skillful  executive  of  Dr.  Althoff.  The 
abolition  of  the  Latin  essay  in  the  final  exami- 
nation of  the  Gymnasium,  the  increased  atten- 


24      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

tion  given  to  German  history  and  literature, 
the  introduction  in  certain  gymnasia  of  French 
previous  to  Latin,  the  reduction  of  the  time 
devoted  to  Greek,  the  admission  of  schools 
without  Greek  (the  Realgymnasia),  and  even 
of  schools  without  Latin  (the  Oberrealschuleri) 
to  the  same  standing  with  the  gymnasia,  the 
tentative  establishment  of  girls'  gymnasia,  the 
proposition  to  introduce  a  certain  amount  of 
election  into  the  curriculum  of  the  higher 
schools,  the  admission  of  women  to  the  uni- 
versities, and  even  to  the  doctorate,  the  liberal 
endowment  of  laboratories  and  other  scientific 
institutions  at  the  universities,  the  foundation 
of  new  polytechnic  schools,  the  official  recog- 
nition of  the  polytechnic  schools  as  being  of 
equal  rank  with  the  universities  and  as  being 
entitled  to  confer  the  highest  academic  degree, 
—  all  this  has  a  decidedly  practical  and,  as 
scoffers  have  said,  American  aspect. 

But  while  it  is  unquestionable  that  most  of 
these  reforms,  or  all  of  them,  have  been  forced 
upon. the  schools  and  universities  by  economic 
needs,  and  the  increased  struggle  in  all  strata 
of  society  for  making  a  livelihood,  it  is  equally 
certain  that  the  economic  motive  has  not  been 
the  only  one  in  bringing  about  these  reforms. 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     25 

A  spiritual  motive,  as  well  as  a  material,  is 
lying  back  of  the  School  Reform,  and  those 
who  oppose  it  —  although  they  may  imagine 
themselves  to  be  the  advocates  of  superior  in- 
terests —  are  surely  not  the  only  supporters  of 
ideal  demands. 

The  increased  struggle  of  life,  the  quicker 
pulsation  of  blood,  the  greater  tension  of  will 
and  intellect,  all  of  which  are  characteristic  fea- 
tures of  modern  society,  are  bringing  about,  in 
Germany  as  much  as  anywhere  else  to-day,  a 
new  type  of  man  and  of  woman.  We  do  not 
care, — this  is  the  instinctive  feeling  prevalent 
among  the  younger  generation  of  parents, — 
we  do  not  care  to  have  the  life  knocked  out  of 
our  children  by  the  old  learning.  Let  those  who 
have  a  special  bent  in  that  direction  devote 
themselves  to  the  study  of  the  ancient  world. 
To  make  an  appreciation  of  ancient  literature 
and  art  the  prime  standard  of  cultivation,  to 
demand  of  all  of  us  a- thorough  knowledge  of 
Greek  and  Latin  grammar,  of  Greek  and  Ro- 
man history,  to  confine  the  best  part  of  school- 
ing to  studies  of  direct  import  only  to  the  phi- 
lologist or  the  historian,  —  this  is  intellectual 
tyranny.  What  is  the  colonization  of  Asia  Mi- 
nor by  the  Greeks,  compared  with  the  gigantic 


26      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

colonization  of  America  by  the  Germanic  and 
Romance  nations  ?  What  is  the  struggle  of 
Rome  and  Carthage  over  the  supremacy  in  the 
Mediterranean,  compared  with  the  struggle  for 
world-dominion  that  has  been  going  on  during 
the  last  few  centuries  ?  What  is  the  conflict 
between  the  Roman  plebs  and  patriciate,  com- 
pared with  the  huge  conflict  between  capital 
and  labor  that  is  now  agitating  the  whole  civ- 
ilized world?  What  is  even  Greek  literature 
and  art,  compared  with  the  wealth  and  variety 
of  artistic  ideals  and  types  produced  by  Italy, 
Spain,  France,  Germany,  the  Netherlands,  and 
England,  not  to  speak  of  other  nations  that 
have  enriched  the  artistic  vision  of  our  own 
age  ?  To  set  up  the  ancient  languages  as  the 
one  means  of  linguistic  training,  to  magnify 
ancient  civilization  as  the  climax  of  all  human 
development,  is  worshiping  an  idol  of  arbitrary 
fancy.  Far  from  having  a  liberalizing  effect 
upon  the  youthful  mind, -this  insistence  by  the 
schoolmen  upon  the  superiority  of  the  ancient 
world  either  tends  to  narrow  the  range  of  in- 
tellectual sympathy,  or,  by  arousing  the  pro- 
test consequent  upon  all  exaggeration,  it  leads 
to  indifference  and  open  hostility  against  the 
very  thing  which  the  pupil  is  bidden  to  ad- 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     27 

mire.  The  true  and  essential  demand  of  a 
liberal  education  is,  that  we  should  be  made 
intellectually  at  home  in  our  own  country  and 
people,  that  we  should  know  the  history  of 
our  mother  tongue,  that  we  should  be  familiar 
with  the  great  epochs  of  our  national  develop- 
ment—  whether  political,  literary,  or  artistic 
—  that  we  should  be  intimately  acquainted 
with  the  language  and  the  literature  of  those 
nations  that  have  had  the  greatest  influence 
upon  our  own  history,  and  with  whom  we  have 
now  the  most  intimate  relations, — in  the  case 
of  Germany,  then,  at  least  the  English  and 
French  language  and  literature  ;  and  only  after 
all  these  requirements  have  been  met  with,  the 
study  of  the  ancient  world  should  come  in  as 
an  element  in  the  education  of  the  average 
man. 

Is  it  not  an  intolerable  condition  of  things 
that  the  majority  of  our  educated  men  should 
have  struggled  through  the  best  part  of  their 
boyhood  with  Greek  moods  and  tenses,  and 
not  be  able  to  read  our  own  Nibelungenlied 
or  Walther  von  der  Vogelweide  in  the  origi- 
nal ?  Is  it  not  an  absurdity  and  a  shame  that 
they  should  have  been  initiated  into  the  de- 
tails of  archaeological  discussions  concerning 


28      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

excavations  in  Olympia  or  Pergamon,  and  at 
the  same  time  have  been  left  practically  igno- 
rant of  the  treasures  of  plastic  art  stored  in  the 
cathedrals  of  Bamberg  or  Naumburg  or  Strass- 
burg  ?  Is  it  not  preposterous  that  they  should 
have  been  made  to  worry  through  Platonic 
dialogues  and  Ciceronian  orations,  without  for 
the  most  part  being  led  to  grasp  their  true 
significance  and  beauty,  and  at  the  same  time 
hardly  know  more  than  the  names  of  such 
men  as  Milton  or  Voltaire  or  Rousseau,  — 
men  who,  both  on  account  of  their  language 
and  because  of  the  subjects  treated  by  them, 
are  very  much  nearer  to  the  understanding 
of  the  youth  of  to-day  ?  If  we  demand  a  com- 
plete reversal  of  method  in  the  study  of  the 
humanities,  we  make  this  demand  not  from 
mercenary  motives,  but  in  the  name  of  liberal 
education.  We  are  convinced  that,  if  the  em- 
phasis of  the  instruction  in  all  schools  were 
laid  upon  the  modern  world,  —  modern  lan- 
guages, modern  history,  modern  art  and  liter- 
ature and  thought,  —  education  would  acquire 
a  new  meaning.  It  would  cease  to  be  a  matter 
of  the  school  alone,  it  would  come  to  be  a  part 
of  public  life.  It  would  be  a  kind  of  self-scru- 
tiny of  the  national  mind  as  to  the  foundations 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     29 

of  its  own  strength.  It  would  lose  all  the 
harshness  and  artificiality  inseparable  from 
the  old  system.  It  would  stimulate  the  in- 
dependent activity  of  the  pupil,  and  his  de- 
sire to  find  his  own  bearings.  It  would  in  the 
best  sense  of  the  word  be  delivery,  delivery 
from  self-deception  and  self-conceit.  It  would 
be  a  most  active  power  in  preventing,  or  at 
least  allaying,  international  misunderstandings 
and  animosities.  For  how  could  a  man  who 
felt  truly  at  home  in  the  intellectual  world, 
at  least  of  France,  Germany,  and  England, 
fail  to  recognize  the  close  interdependence  of 
the  great  modern  nations  ;  how  could  he  but 
be  filled  with  the  desire  to  contribute  on  his 
part  toward  their  mutual  understanding  and 
friendly  devotion  to  a  common  task  ? 

If,  then,  the  tendency  toward  modern  sub- 
jects, so  characteristic  in  contemporary  Ger- 
man instruction  in  the  humanities,  is  actuated 
to  a  very  large  extent  by  ideal  motives,  the 
same  must  be  said  of  the  two  other  most  con- 
spicuous features  of  German  education  of  to- 
day,—  the  emphasis  laid  upon  natural  science, 
and  the  constantly  increasing  interest  in  uni- 
versity studies  taken  by  women.  As  to  nat- 
ural science,  the  conviction  is  steadily  gaining 


3o      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

ground  that,  quite  apart  from  its  importance 
as  an  economic  factor,  it  should  form  part  of 
the  liberal  training  of  an  educated  man.  As 
little  as  a  man  can  be  called  truly  educated 
who  is  not  intellectually  at  home  in  the  great 
problems  and  conflicts  that  have  shaped  the 
history  of  his  own  country,  as  little  can  he  be 
called  educated  who  is  not  intellectually  at 
home  in  the  physical  world  that  surrounds  us. 
And  what  age  has  brought  this  self-evident 
truth  clearer  into  view  than  ours,  which  puts 
its  best  energy  into  the  service  of  physical 
observation,  and  which  year  by  year  reveals 
new  forces  in  the  cosmic  order  hidden  hereto- 
fore ?  It  is  this  truth  to  which  Germany  has 
risen  with  astonishing  rapidity.  As  to  the  in- 
flux of  women  into  the  universities,  there  can 
be  no  question  that  the  desire  for  economic 
independence  or  the  necessity  of  self-support 
has  not  been  the  most  cogent  cause  for  this 
remarkable  phenomenon.  Most  of  the  Ger- 
man women  do  not  pursue  bread  and  butter 
studies  in  the  university  ;  what  they  crave  is 
intellectual  stimulus.  The  German  woman 
has,  late  perhaps,1  but  on  that  very  account 

1   It  should,    however,  be  said    that   women  played   an 
important  part  in  the  German  Romantic  movement  and  that 


GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     31 

with  particular  ardor,  taken  up  the  struggle 
for  emancipation  ;  she  has  come  to  the  full 
consciousness  of  her  spiritual  dignity.  She 
does  not  want  any  longer  to  confine  herself  to 
the  narrow  sphere  of  the  house,  she  does  not 
want  any  longer  to  be  a  mere  piece  of  decora- 
tion, she  does  not  want  any  longer  an  edu- 
cation which  fits  her  only  for  society  babble. 
She  is  resolved  to  get  on  her  own  feet  intel- 
lectually ;  to  grapple  herself  with  the  problems 
of  modern  life;  to  become  a  comrade,  an 
equal  of  man  ;  to  reach  out  into  the  wide 
realm  of  liberal  study.  The  result  has  been 
that  to-day  there  is  hardly  a  German  family 
of  the  higher  classes  in  which  some  feminine 
member  is  not  taking  up  some  serious  life 
work,  and  that  the  state  of  things  of  a  gener- 
ation ago,  when  the  lieutenant  was  the  ordi- 
nary ideal  of  the  typical  German  Backfisch,  is 
fast  getting  to  be  obsolete.  The  remarkable 
activity  which  German  women  have  of  late 
displayed  in  literature,  especially  in  lyrics  and 
in  the  novel,  is  only  one  phase,  although  a 
highly  significant  one,  of  this  widespread,  ar- 
dent, and  earnest  striving  of  womanhood  for 

the  emancipation  of  woman  was  a  demand  most  eagerly 
raised  by  the  Schlegels  and  their  compeers. 


32      GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

higher  activity.  The  woman  question  is  as 
much  alive,  and  as  momentous,  and  on  as 
high  a  plane,  in  Germany  as  in  any  other 
country. 

It  will  perhaps  be  clear  now  in  what  sense 
I  called  social  efficiency  the  fundamental  de- 
mand of  the  new  German  education.  Not  in 
the  sense  as  though  only  that  had  social  value 
in  education  which  is  of  immediate  application 
to  some  specific  public  need  ;  but  rather  in  the 
sense  that  only  that  knowledge  is  socially  val- 
uable which  has  been  self-acquired,  which  has 
become  part  and  parcel  of  the  individual's  own 
make-up,  which  adds  to  the  individual's  origi- 
nality, which  increases  his  or  her  power  of 
adjustment  to  given  conditions,  which  leads  to 
a  fuller  insight  into  the  great  problems  press- 
ing in  upon  us  from  all  sides,  which  stimulates 
active  participation  in  public  work  of  any  kind, 
which  heightens  the  joy  of  life.  It  will  also 
have  become  clear  that  the  nickname  "Amer- 
ican," which  has  been  attached  to  the  new  edu- 
cation, is  in  reality  not  a  term  of  derision,  but 
a  name  of  honor  and  of  deep  significance.  For 
it  brings  out  the  fact  that  the  two  great  na- 
tions which  have  perhaps  more  to  give  to  each 
other  than   any  other   two    nations  of  to-day 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     33 

stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  in  this  fight  for 
a  rational,  modern  education.  Indeed,  there 
can  hardly  be  any  question  that  it  is  in  Amer- 
ica and  in  Germany  that  this  cause  will  first 
achieve  its  final  and  lasting  triumph.  In  no 
other  country,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
Scandinavia,  is  public  opinion  so  overwhelm- 
ingly on  the  side  of  the  new  ideal ;  in  no  other 
country  the  work  of  reconstruction  is  taken  up 
in  so  earnest,  methodical,  and  comprehensive 
a  manner  ;  in  no  other  country  the  reform  has 
found  such  sagacious,  uncompromising,  and 
fearless  leaders.  It  is  more  than  a  mere  coin- 
cidence that  at  the  present  moment  the  two 
most  influential  men  in  educational  matters  in 
America  and  Germany  should  be  men  so  strik- 
ingly alike  in  intellectual  temper  as  President 
Eliot  and  Dr.  Althoff. 

Ill 

Thus  far  we  have  paid  little  or  no  attention 
to  the  spiritual  ideals  dominating  contemporary 
German  life.  In  considering  this  side  of  our 
subject,  we  are  at  once  struck  with  a  remark- 
able difference  between  conditions  in  Germany 
and  the  state  of  things  in  other  countries,  par- 
ticularly America  and  England.    In  America 


34      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

and  England  questions  of  the  higher  life  are 
still  very  largely  bound  up  with  the  Church  ; 
it  is  hardly  conceivable  that  spiritual  problems 
should  arise  in  either  of  these  countries  with- 
out the  Church  trying  to  meet  them.  In  Ger- 
many, the  Church  has  ceased  to  be  a  moral 
leader ;  it  has  sunk  back  to  the  position  of  a 
defender  of  creeds.  The  inner  life  has  been 
secularized  in  Germany;  the  men  who  shape 
spiritual  ideals  are  philosophers,  poets,  artists. 
In  a  large  measure  this  state  of  affairs  is 
due  to  the  after-effect  of  that  great  epoch  of 
German  humanism  signalized  by  the  names  of 
Goethe  and  Kant,  Schiller  and  Fichte.  The 
very  substance  of  the  life  work  of  these  men 
and  their  compeers  consisted  in  this,  that  they 
replaced  the  ecclesiastical  doctrine  of  atone- 
ment by  the  belief  in  the  saving  quality  of 
restless  striving.  Never  in  the  whole  history 
of  the  world  has  there  been  held  up  to  man  an 
ideal  of  life  more  exalted,  more  inspiring,  freer 
from  unworthy  or  belittling  motives,  than  in 
their  teachings.  They  trusted  in  the  essential 
goodness  of  all  life;  they  conceived  of  the 
universe  as  a  great  spiritual  being,  engaged  in 
constant  self-revelation  and  in  a  constant  strug- 
gle toward  higher  forms  of  existence.    They 


GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     35 

believed  that  man,  as  a  part  of  this  spiritual 
universe,  was  in  immediate  and  instinctive 
communication  with  its  innermost  essence ; 
and  they  saw  the  great  office  of  man  in  help- 
ing the  spirit  toward  its  fullest  self-realization. 
They  did  not  close  their  eyes  to  the  fact  that 
there  is  evil  in  the  world.  But  they  saw  in 
evil  merely  abortive  attempts  toward  the  good, 
—  failures,  as  it  were,  of  the  world-spirit  in  its 
reaching  out  for  completeness  of  self-mani- 
festation; and  the  remedy  for  evil,  the  atone- 
ment for  guilt,  they  found  not  in  contrition  or 
self-inflicted  suffering,  but  in  renewed  effort, 
in  heightened  activity,  in  unremitting  work. 
That  the  practical  demands  growing  out  of 
this  new  faith,  the  fullest  development  of  all 
human  faculties,  the  freest  play  of  all  human 
aspirations,  and  the  redemption  of  man  from 
sin  by  his  own  strength,  are  absolutely  incom- 
patible with  the  traditional  church  doctrine  of 
the  radical  perversity  of  human  nature  and  the 
impossibility  of  salvation  except  through  divine 
intercession,  is  undeniable.  But  it  is  equally 
clear  that  they  are  in  full  accord  with  the  whole 
drift,  with  the  strongest  tendencies,  of  modern 
life.  And  there  can  be  no  question  that  litera- 
ture and  art,  in  so  far  as  they  are  expressions 


36      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

of  what  is  most  distinctly  modern  in  contem- 
porary life,  cannot  help  drawing  their  best  in- 
spiration from  such  views  as  these. 

During  the  decades  following  the  death  of 
Goethe,  the  problems  of  political  reconstruc- 
tion and  national  unity  so  largely  absorbed 
public  attention  that  the  higher  demands  of 
the  human  heart,  the  longing  for  spiritual  per- 
fection, for  oneness  of  the  individual  with  the 
all,  for  the  harmonious  rounding  out  of  per- 
sonal life,  had,  as  it  were,  to  be  hushed.  Hence 
the  lameness,  the  half-heartedness,  the  prevail- 
ing mediocrity,  of  German  literature  and  art 
about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
With  the  foundation  of  the  new  Empire  in 
1870,  the  most  urgent  national  need  was  at 
last  put  out  of  the  way  ;  a  basis  for  a  secure 
political  development  had  been  established. 
From  now  on,  questions  of  the  inner  life 
pressed  to  the  foreground  once  more,  and  in 
course  of  time  there  followed  a  revival  of  that 
moral  enthusiasm,  that  intense  striving  for  a 
free  human  personality,  that  fearless  and  com- 
prehensive view  of  the  world  as  a  great  liv- 
ing organism,  which  had  brought  about  the 
great  epoch  of  German  culture  at  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century.    To-day  we  are  in  the 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     37 

midst  of  a  literary  and  artistic  movement  which 
is  in  every  way  a  worthy  counterpart  to  that 
great  era  of  moral  delivery  ;  to-day  literature 
and  art  have  again  assumed  the  role  of  leader- 
ship in  the  national  striving  for  spiritual  pos- 
sessions. 

If  we  were  to  express  in  one  word  the  key- 
note of  this  new  German  art,  so  as  to  indi- 
cate what  it  has  added  and  is  adding  to  the 
moral  consciousness  of  the  German  people, 
we  probably  could  not  choose  a  better  word 
than  sympathy  with  life,  —  Lebensbejahung,  as 
Nietzsche,  its  most  impassioned,  though  by  no 
means  noblest,  champion  would  say.  Of  course 
no  art  could  be  imagined  which  was  entirely 
devoid  of  this  sympathy  with  life ;  the  main 
difference  between  the  various  epochs  of  ar- 
tistic development  consists  in  the  greater  or 
smaller  degree,  the  larger  or  narrower  range, 
of  this  sympathy.  The  distinguishing  feature 
of  contemporary  German,  as  indeed  of  all 
modern,  art  is  the  intense  ardor,  the  well-nigh 
universal  comprehensiveness  of  this  feeling. 
Humanity,  —  this  is  the  general  impression 
left  by  the  most  characteristic  productions  of 
this  new  art,  —  humanity  is  once  more  throb- 
bing with  the  desire  to  comprehend  all,  to 


38      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

sympathize  with  all,  to  feel  at  one  with  all. 
Dumb  nature  and  animal  life,  the  lot  of  the 
common  people,  the  drudgery  of  everyday  ex- 
istence, the  suffering  of  the  downtrodden  and 
the  degraded,  the  whole  gamut  of  human  in- 
stincts, passions,  ambitions,  and  aspirations, — 
it  is  all  worthy  of  loving  consideration  and  inter- 
est, all  is  part  of  one  great  living  whole,  in  it  all 
there  is  felt  the  breath  of  the  infinite  spirit, 
the  restless  striving  of  the  universal  life  for 
completeness  of  existence. 

The  two  men  who  have  given  the  most 
perfect  artistic  expression  to  this  new  panthe- 
ism, Richard  Wagner  and  Arnold  Bocklin, 
are  not  any  longer  among  the  living,  but  their 
works  are  as  active  a  force  in  creating  the  ideal 
atmosphere  of  cultivated  Germany  as  ever 
before.  The  thousands  upon  thousands  who 
year  after  year  listen  to  the  soul-stirring  strains 
of  Wagner's  music,  who  enter  into  the  world 
of  elemental  longings,  passions,  and  strivings 
contained  in  such  heroic  figures  as  Tannhauser, 
Tristan,  Siegfried,  or  Parsifal,  cannot  help  un- 
dergoing thereby  a  process  of  moral  revolu- 
tion. They  cannot  help  being  made  to  feel, — 
blindly,  perhaps,  in  most  cases,  but  on  that 
account  no  less  forcibly,  —  that  here  there  are 


GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     39 

types  of  a  life  raised  above  the  ordinary  con- 
ceptions of  good  and  evil,  beings  that  have  in 
them  something  of  the  primeval  power  of 
nature  herself,  superior  both  to  happiness  and 
to  distress,  finding  their  only  law  and  their 
only  joy  in  living  out  what  is  in  them.  Even 
where  their  names  suggest  ecclesiastical  tradi- 
tion and  lore,  these  heroic  figures  are  them- 
selves as  unecclesiastical  as  possible ;  no  mat- 
ter whether  they  succumb  to  a  tragic  fate 
or  whether  they  press  on  to  victory,  they  are 
sufficient  unto  themselves,  they  remain  unbro- 
ken, they  have  no  need  of  changing  themselves 
into  something  which  is  contrary  to  their  natu- 
ral instincts  ;  what  inspires,  moves,  and  main- 
tains them,  is  their  indestructible  faith  in  life, 
their  instinctive  assurance  that  they  are  inde- 
structible themselves,  part  of  that  great,  mys- 
terious One  and  All  which  through  countless 
transformations  and  cataclysms  maintains  itself 
in  unimpaired  splendor  and  strength.  And 
similar  is  the  effect  of  Bocklin's  paintings. 
Here  also  there  is  a  life,  exultant,  ecstatic  al- 
most, with  the  feeling  of  the  oneness  of  man 
with  the  powers  that  surround  him.  Here  the 
line  dividing  man  and  nature  has  been  effaced 
entirely.     Whether  we  see  the  surf  dashing 


4o      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

against  the  rocks,  tossing  about  in  its  mighty 
whirl  a  fantastic  host  of  half-human,  half-ani- 
mal forms,  or  the  fights  of  centaurs  on  lonely 
mountain  heights,  encompassed  by  rolling 
clouds  ;  whether  the  wonders  of  the  forest  open 
before  us  in  the  shy,  half-crazed  glance  of  the 
unicorn  stepping  noiselessly  through  its  grue- 
some dusk ;  whether  the  holy  grove  receives 
us  in  common  with  the  solemn  company 
gathered  about  the  altar  and  bending  in  mute 
adoration  before  the  sacred  flame ;  whether 
we  lose  ourselves  in  gentle  meditation  with 
the  venerable  old  hermit  playing  the  violin 
before  the  image  of  the  Virgin,  or  whether  we 
follow  the  daring  fancy  of  the  knight-errant 
riding  with  head  erect  and  lordly  mien  over 
the  sandy,  desolate  beach  ;  whether  the  sun 
sparkles  in  the  brook  and  the  meadows  teem 
with  flowers  and  sporting  children,  or  whether 
the  Island  of  the  Dead,  with  its  sombre  cy- 
presses and  its  austere  rocks,  looms  up  from 
the  glassy  sea,  —  everywhere  there  seems  to 
look  at  us  that  same  magic,  all-embracing,  all- 
enfolding,  inexhaustible  being,  of  which  man, 
beast,  plant,  and  all  the  elements  are  partial, 
but  closely  kindred  manifestations ;  every- 
where our  sense  of  life  is  heightened,  our  sym- 


GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     41 

pathy  is  enlarged,  our  passions  are  stirred,  our 
longing  for  a  complete  rounding  out  of  all  our 
faculties  is  intensified.  Of  Bocklin  it  may  in 
truth  be  said  that  he  has  forced  the  present 
generation  of  Germans  to  see  in  a  new  way, 
more  intensely,  and  at  wider  range  ;  that  the 
sky  seems  bluer,  the  meadow  greener,  the 
light  of  the  sun  more  dazzling,  the  shadow  of 
the  poplar  and  the  cypress  deeper,  than  before 
he  opened  our  eyes  to  these  sights  ;  that  he, 
as  no  one  before  him,  has  revealed  nature  as 
one  gigantic,  irresistible  striving  for  beauty, 
for  color,  for  light,  for  variety  of  forms,  for 
perfection  of  types.  That  a  man  of  such 
astounding  creative  power,  and  of  such  an 
extraordinary  wealth  of  ideas  as  he  should 
during  his  lifetime  have  had  to  struggle  against 
all  sorts  of  prejudices  and  animosities,  and 
that  even  now  he  should  hardly  have  begun 
to  exert  an  influence  beyond  the  confines  of 
German-speaking  countries,1  is  a  fresh  proof 
of  how  hard  it  is  for  the  truly  great  to  dispos- 
sess fat  mediocrity. 

1  I  believe,  the  short  sketch  of  Bocklin's  work  contained 
in  my  Glimpses  of  Modern  German  Culture  is  the  first  and 
only  attempt  made  by  an  American  writer  to  characterize 
his  art. 


42      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

Perhaps  none  of  the  sculptors,  painters, 
musicians,  and  authors  of  the  younger  gener- 
ation can  be  compared  in  range  and  sweep  of 
conception  with  the  two  masters  whose  works 
will  probably  stand  to  posterity  as  calmly  re- 
splendent symbols  of  all  the  brooding,  longing, 
striving,  all  the  passion,  exultation,  and  rest- 
less activity  that  vibrated  in  German  hearts  at 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  the  be- 
ginning of  the  twentieth.  That,  however,  even 
the  most  modern  German  art  and  literature  is 
committed  to  these  same  ideals,  that  it  is  per- 
meated with  this  same  zeal  of  grappling  with 
the  fundamental  problems  of  existence,  that  it 
is  impelled  by  the  same  desire  to  express  the 
innermost  cravings  of  life  in  all  their  wealth 
and  variety,  the  mere  enumeration  of  such 
names  as  Richard  Strauss,  Max  Klinger,  Ger- 
hart  Hauptmann,  Joseph  Widmann,  Wilhelm 
von  Polenz,  Gustav  Frenssen,  Ricarda  Huch, 
Helene  Bohlau,  and  Clara  Viebig,  is  sufficient 
proof.  And  it  should  be  added  that  recent 
years  have  given  us  not  a  few  productions 
which  for  their  artistic  perfection  as  well  as 
their  spiritual  significance,  may  well  be  ranked 
among  the  great. 

Think  of  such  creations  as   Strauss's    Tod 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY      43 

und  Verklarungy  Klinger's  Beethoven,  Haupt- 
mann's  Der  Arme  Heinrich ,  Widmann's  Mai- 
kafer-Komoedie,  —  has  the  contemporary  art  of 
other  nations  anything  to  offer  deeper  in  feel- 
ing or  more  irresistible  in  expression  ?  Does 
not  Strauss's  ravishing  composition  lead  us 
into  the  very  centre  of  the  elemental  struggles 
and  catastrophes  of  life  ;  does  it  not  spread 
before  us  the  vision  of  an  infinite,  all-em- 
bracing activity?  Has  not  Klinger's  chisel 
transformed  the  features  of  Beethoven  into  a 
symbol  of  the  concentrated  energy  of  modern 
intellectual  striving  ;  has  it  not  made  the  mar- 
ble proclaim  the  indomitable  determination 
of  modern  man  to  conquer  matter  ?  Is  not 
Hauptmann's  dramatization  of  the  mediaeval 
legend  of  "  Poor  Henry "  a  wonderful  em- 
bodiment of  the  modern  longing  for  firmness 
of  faith,  for  spiritual  resurrection,  a  song  of 
redemption  by  inner  transformation  ?  And 
does  not  Widmann's  fantastic  poem  of  the 
joys,  the  desires,  and  the  tragedy  of  insect  life 
open  up  our  heart  to  everything  that  lives  and 
draws  breath;  does  it  not  make  us  see  our  own 
life  in  a  new  light,  increasing  our  capacity  for 
enjoyment  and  strengthening  our  readiness  to 
endure  ?    Indeed,  here  there  are  ideal  creations 


44      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

that  have  sprung  from  the  very  midst  of  the 
spiritual  problems  that  surround  us  ;  here 
there  are  hymns  of  modern  belief ;  here  art 
appears  in  her  noblest  form,  as  priestess  of 
humanity,  as  healer,  uplifter,  exhorter,  and 
redeemer. 

But  quite  apart  from  such  works  as  these, 
works  appealing  to  aspirations  universally  hu- 
man and  removed  in  subject-matter  from  the 
actual  conditions  of  to-day,  what  a  wealth  of 
idealism  and  joyous  vitality  has  come  to  light 
of  late  in  the  literature  dealing  directly  with 
contemporary  subjects  and  situations!  The 
German  novel,  in  particular,  has  during  the 
last  ten  or  fifteen  years  undergone  a  complete 
transformation.  Not  in  vain  has  it  gone  to 
school  with  the  masters  of  realism  in  Russia 
and  France ;  it  has  learned  directness  of  ex- 
pression, precision  of  delineation,  perspicuity 
of  grouping,  simplicity  and  truthfulness  of 
characterization.  As  mere  specimens  of  artis- 
tic composition,  such  novels  as  Polenz's  Der 
Buttnerbauer,  Ricarda  Huch's  Rudolf  Ursteu, 
Clara  Viebig's  Das  Tagliche  Brot  or  Das 
Schlafende  Heer,  Helene  Bohlau's  Der  Ran- 
gier bahnhof  are  equal  to  anything  which  the 
contemporary  novel   of  Europe  or    America 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     45 

has  produced.  What,  however,  gives  their 
peculiar  significance  to  these  and  similar 
German  novels  of  to-day  is  the  noble,  gen- 
erous humanity  pervading  them,  the  sym- 
pathy with  human  suffering  and  struggling, 
the  charitable  view  taken  even  of  the  degen- 
erate and  the  criminal,  the  openness  and  hos- 
pitality for  any  kind  of  strong  and  genuine 
feeling,  the  belief  in  the  sacredness  of  life,  the 
earnest  desire  to  do  justice  to  all  of  its  types, 
the  eagerness  to  approach  all  questions  of  pri- 
vate conduct  or  public  morality  without  pre- 
judice or  malice,  the  trust  in  the  saving  quality 
of  honest  endeavor  and  courageous  grappling 
with  circumstance.  These  novelists  are  moral 
leaders,  even  though  they  do  not  know  it,  and 
most  effectively  so  when  they  do  not  intend  to 
be.  They  are  helping  toward  a  wider  and  fuller 
conception  of  humanity,  a  more  truthful  foun- 
dation of  morals,  a  freer  development  of  per- 
sonality, a  society  based  on  justice  and  reason. 
They  are  enriching  the  moral  consciousness 
of  the  German  people ;  they  are  adding  to  its 
storehouse  of  spiritual  ideals. 

I  have  already  alluded  to  the  fact  that  the 
Church,  the  great  organized  power  for  the 
maintenance  and  propagation  of  spirituality, 


46      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

has  remained  entirely  foreign  to  this  body  of 
spiritual  ideals  which,  sprung  from  the  great 
epoch  of  German  Classicism  and  Romanti- 
cism, have  formed  the  German  lay  religion 
ever  since,  and  have  during  the  last  few  decades 
found  renewed  expression  in  literature  and  art. 
Unfortunately,  this  statement  is  not  quite 
strong  enough.  The  Church,  both  Protest- 
ant and  Catholic,  has  not  only  maintained  an 
attitude  of  indifference  toward  these  ideals;  it 
has  over  and  over  again  declared  its  open 
hostility  to  them,  it  has  condemned  them  as 
unchristian  and  atheistic,  it  has  designated 
them  as  the  root  of  all  evil  in  modern  society. 
Here  there  lies  the  fundamental  antagonism, 
the  cardinal  paradox,  of  contemporary  Ger- 
man life.  Nowhere  is  there  a  greater  chance, 
a  wider  opportunity,  for  the  Church  to  become 
a  spiritual  leader,  to  receive  into  its  own 
stream  all  the  higher  aspirations  of  the  nation, 
than  in  Germany.  No  people  is  at  heart  more 
deeply  religious  than  the  German  ;  nowhere  is 
there  more  individual  reaching  out  after  the 
Infinite.  No  view  of  life  seems  more  clearly 
destined  to  become  the  common  creed  of 
modern  humanity  than  the  noble  optimism, 
the  joyous  trust  in  the  universe,  the  belief  in 


GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY     47 

the  affinity  of  all  things,  the  sympathy  with 
all  existence,  the  faith  in  work,  in  continual 
endeavor  as  the  royal  road  to  redemption, 
which  are  the  living  legacy  of  our  classic  litera- 
ture and  philosophy.  There  is  nothing,  abso- 
lutely nothing,  in  these  convictions  which  the 
Church  might  not  assimilate.  By  placing  her- 
self on  the  same  intellectual  level  with  our 
thinkers,  poets,  and  artists ;  by  relinquishing 
the  unworthy  notion  of  an  extramundane  deity 
residing  somewhere  in  a  corner  of  the  uni- 
verse ;  by  abandoning  the  childish  conception 
of  a  single  revelation  of  this  deity  in  times  past 
through  the  mouths  of  a  few  men  and  to  a 
few  chosen  people  ;  by  resolutely  casting  aside 
the  incongruous  idea  of  the  salvation  of 
mankind  through  one  vicarious  sacrifice ;  by 
squarely  and  openly  adopting  a  religion  which 
is  in  harmony  with  the  modern  view  of  the 
universe,  which  is  broad  enough  to  include  the 
demands  of  every  human  instinct,  and  which 
listens  without  fear  to  every  message  of  Na- 
ture and  all  her  interpreters,  —  the  Church 
would  at  once  rally  around  herself  all  the  long- 
ing, striving,  aspiring  minds  of  the  nation,  and 
a  new  era  of  popular  religious  life  would  be  at 
hand.    Germany,  the  home  of  free  thought, 


48      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

would  become  the  home  of  a  new,  free  reli- 
gion, also. 

Instead  of  that,  what  do  we  see?  We  see 
that  the  Church,  of  all  the  public  forces  in 
German  life  of  to-day,  is  the  only  one  which 
has  remained  absolutely  stationary  ;  that  she 
obstinately  clings  to  a  set  of  superstitious  be- 
liefs which  are  in  direct  contradiction  to  the 
most  primitive  knowledge  acquired  in  the 
common  schools  ;  that  she  forces  these  beliefs 
upon  the  religious  instruction  in  the  schools, 
nay,  even  upon  the  theological  faculties  of  the 
universities,  the  seats  of  the  "  higher  criti- 
cism; "  that  she  applies  her  obsolete  and  un- 
enlightened views  with  such  consistency  and 
energy  that  she  has,  for  instance,  succeeded  in 
having  cremation  forbidden  by  law  in  Prussia, 
on  the  ground  of  this  process  of  interment 
being  prejudicial  to  the  resurrection  of  the 
body  ;  we  see,  in  other  words,  that  the  Church 
is  doing  her  best  to  make  religious  life  to  the 
great  majority  of  the  people  appear  as  one 
prodigious  lie  or  mockery.  No  wonder  that, 
in  the  Protestant  parts  of  Germany,  at  least, 
the  religious  instruction  forced  upon  school 
children  leads  in  most  cases  with  growing  ma- 
turity only  to  contempt  for  everything  con- 


GERMAN   IDEALS   OF   TO-DAY     49 

nected  with  church  life ;  that  sermons  as  a 
rule  are  preached  to  empty  benches ;  that  the 
materialistic  vagaries  of  Haeckel  and  the  un- 
measured anticlericalism  of  Nietzsche  find  a 
ready  ear  with  the  masses,  and  incite  them  to 
hatred  of  religion  herself. 

Such  a  state  of  things  cannot  last.  Either, 
the  Church  persists  in  her  present  defiance  of 
everything  that  makes  life  interesting  and 
precious  to  thinking  men, —  in  that  case  the 
disaffection  and  the  revolt  against  the  Church 
will,  of  course,  steadily  grow,  and  ultimately 
reach  such  dimensions  that  the  whole  ecclesi- 
astical system  goes  to  ruin  ;  or,  the  Church 
rises  at  last  to  her  opportunity,  fills  herself 
with  the  modern  faith  in  life,  casts  to  the  winds 
dogmatic  squabbles,  and  preaches  that  God 
whom  Christ  and  his  disciples  preached,  the 
infinite  spirit  in  whom  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being.1  In  that  case  there  will  be  a 
religious  reawakening  such  as  Germany  has 
not  seen  since  Luther.  Let  us  hope  that  this 
is  what  the  future  has  in  store  for  us. 

A  few  words  in  conclusion.    We  have  seen 

1  Undoubtedly,  the  extraordinary  success  of  such  a  book 
as  Frenssen's  Hilligenlei  is  largely  due  to  the  widespread 
longing  for  a  religious  revival  of  this  kind. 


50      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

that  contemporary  Germany  is  by  no  means 
lacking  in  ideal  impulses.  Social  justice  as  the 
controlling  force  in  the  development  of  po- 
litical institutions,  social  efficiency  as  the  goal 
of  education,  universal  sympathy  with  life  as 
the  guiding  principle  of  literature  and  art,  — 
this  is  a  triad  of  uplifting  motives  which  can- 
not help  stimulating  every  constructive  en- 
ergy, every  power  for  good,  contained  in  the 
nation.  All  that  Germany  needs  is  an  undis- 
turbed condition  of  public  affairs,  absence  of 
foreign  complications,  and  mutual  forbearance 
and  good  will  in  domestic  controversies. 
With  this  prospect  assured,  the  new  ideals 
briefly  analyzed  on  the  preceding  pages  will 
more  and  more  completely  dominate  the  na- 
tional consciousness,  and  the  way  will  be  free 
toward  a  golden  age  of  German  achievements 
in  every  domain  of  higher  aspiration. 


II 


THREE    ANNIVERSARY 
ADDRESSES 


I.    GOETHE'S    MESSAGE   TO 
AMERICA1 

Anniversaries  of  great  men  of  the  past  are 
valuable  as  incentives  for  stating  anew  the  abid- 
ing elements  of  their  fame,  for  reexamining  their 
essential  contributions  to  the  higher  life,  for 
realizing  afresh  those  traits  in  them  which,  in 
spite  of  changed  surroundings  and  conditions, 
appeal  to  us  with  the  force  of  immediate  actu- 
ality. The  Goethe  anniversary,  then,  which  is 
being  celebrated  this  year  in  not  a  few  Ameri- 
can cities  as  well  as  throughout  Germany,  may 
well  induce  us  to  ask,  not  what  was  Goethe  for 
his  time  and  his  people,  but  what  is  he  for  our 
time  and  our  people, — what  insights,  convic- 
tions, ideals,  may  we  gain  from  his  work  and 
his  personality  that  will  help  us  in  facing  the 
manifold  problems  that  beset  our  own  life  ;  in 
short,  what  is  Goethe's  message  to  America  ? 
T  shall  try  to  answer  this  question  under  the 
head  of  two  ideas,  the  ideas  of  freedom  and 

1  An  address  delivered,  in  1899,  at  the  Goethe  anniver- 
sary celebration  in  Cleveland. 


54      GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

culture  ;  for  in  these  two  conceptions,  it  seems 
to  me,  the  sum  total  of  Goethe's  message  to 
America  is  contained. 

I 

That  Goethe,  before  everything  else,  is  a 
spiritual  emancipator  must  be  clear  to  every 
one  who  has  felt,  however  faintly,  the  breath 
of  his  genius.  Yet  nowhere  can  this  eman- 
cipating force  of  Goethe's  character  be  better 
understood  or  work  more  freely  than  here  in 
America.  Happily,  the  time  is  long  since  past 
when  he  was  feared  by  respectable  society  as  a 
libertine  and  destroyer  of  good  morals,  when 
he  was  hated  by  the  church  as  an  atheist  and 
a  subverter  of  faith.  Even  his  adversaries, 
nowadays,  have  agreed  to  respect  him  as  the 
great  apostle  of  free  humanity.  Nevertheless, 
it  may  not  be  superfluous  to  show  how  closely 
Goethe's  ideal  of  a  free  humanity  is  allied  to 
the  best  in  American  life. 

Goethe  is  a  classic  of  individualism.  His 
moral  conceptions  are  founded  upon  the  un- 
wavering belief  in  the  paramount  value  of 
personality  ;  and  the  full  assertion,  the  com- 
plete development,  of  this  personality  is  to 
him  the  fundamental  and  inviolable  law  of  all 


GOETHE'S  MESSAGE  TO  AMERICA    55 

human  activity.  If  his  Wilhelm  Meister  had 
no  other  importance  or  interest  for  us,  this 
novel  would  be  sure  of  a  lasting  place  in  the 
history  of  American  culture  for  this  reason 
alone :  that  here  an  idea  is  anticipated  which 
may  be  called  the  very  corner  stone  of  educa- 
tional thought  in  America,  —  the  idea  that  the 
true  task  of  education  is,  not  to  preserve  from 
error,  but  to  guide  through  error  to  fuller  in- 
dividuality and  richer  experience.  It  is,  how- 
ever, not  only  in  this  general  principle  of 
individualism  that  Goethe  is  at  one  with  the 
strongest  tendencies  of  American  intellectual 
life  ;  in  the  application  also  of  this  principle  to 
concrete  reality  he  seems  to  address  himself 
above  all  to  a  people  which,  like  the  Ameri- 
can, is  engaged  in  the  struggle  of  shaping  its 
own  national  individuality. 

Outright  American,  one  might  say  to  begin 
with,  is  the  extraordinary  sense  of  reality  which 
has  prevented  Goethe  from  becoming  a  prey  to 
the  fantastic  speculations  and  romantic  hallu- 
cinations of  his  time,  and  which  perhaps  more 
than  anything  else  has  helped  him  in  the  mani- 
fold conflicts  of  his  life  to  assert  incessantly 
his  own  self.  To  be  sure,  he  too  paid  his  trib- 
ute to  the  sentimentalism  of  the  period  in  which 


56      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

his  youth  fell ;  he-  too  was  affected  by  the 
exaggerated  idealism  of  theWeimar  epoch ;  he 
too  suffered  from  the  overstraining  of  the  aes- 
thetic sense  which  gives  to  most  of  the  great 
German  writers  of  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  an  almost  feminine  character. 
Yet  how  does  his  Werther  stand  out  from  the 
other  sentimental  novels  of  the  Storm  and 
Stress  period  through  genuine  feeling  and 
plastic  power !  In  what  clear  and  simple  out- 
line does  his  Iphigenie  stand  forth  against  the 
shadowy  productions  of  the  other  classicists  ! 
How  firm  and  resolute  even  so  idealized  figures 
as  Hermann  and  Dorothea  tread  the  ground 
of  reality  !  And  with  what  inexorable  truthful- 
ness does  Goethe,  in  Tasso  and  in  the  Elective 
Affinities,  expose  the  immorality  of  aspirations 
which  do  not  rest  upon  the  recognition  of 
actual  facts  and  existing  laws!  It  was  this 
incorruptible  sense  of  reality  which  enabled 
Goethe,  in  the  affairs  of  Church  and  State, 
always  to  find  out  the  truly  productive  and 
significant,  no  matter  to  what  party  it  might 
belong  ;  so  that  the  admirer  of  Napoleon  could 
also  be  an  admirer  of  English  parliamentary 
government,  the  follower  of  Spinoza  also  a 
glorifier  of  mediaeval  popery.    It  was  this  same 


GOETHE'S  MESSAGE  TO  AMERICA    57 

sense  of  reality  which  preserved  Goethe  from 
subscribing  to  any  of  the  metaphysical  tenets 
which,  during  his  long  life,  one  after  the  other 
intoxicated  the  minds  of  his  contemporaries. 
It  was  this  same  sense  of  reality  which  in  sci- 
entific matters  kept  him  in  the  narrow  path  of 
patient  and  unbiased  observation  ;  which  made 
him  in  biological  research  a  forerunner  of 
Darwin ;  in  the  history  of  literature  and  art  a 
master  of  that  criticism  which  does  not  con- 
demn or  canonize,  but  analyzes  and  compre- 
hends. It  was  this  same  sense  of  reality  which 
made  him  speak  the  blunt  but  wholesome  word: 
"The  occupation  with  thoughts  on  immortal- 
ity is  for  aristocratic  circles,  and  especially  for 
ladies  who  have  nothing  to  do;  "  which  made 
him  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  aged  Faust  this 
confession  of  faith  :  — 

The  sphere  of  earth  is  known  enough  to  me  ; 
The  view  beyond  is  barred  immutably. 
A  fool,  who  there  his  blinking  eyes  directeth 
And  o'er  his  clouds  of  peers  a  place  expecteth! 
Firm  let  him  stand,  and  look  around  him  well! 
This  world  means  something  to  the  capable. 
Why  needs  he  through  eternity  to  wend  ? 
He  here  acquires  what  he  can  apprehend. 
Thus  let  him  wander  down  his  earthly  day; 
When  spirits  haunt,  go  quietly  his  way; 


58      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

In  marching  onward  bliss  and  torment  find, 
Though,  every  moment,  with  unsated  mind. 

Do  we  not  recognize  in  all  this  a  deep  af- 
finity between  Goethe  and  the  genius  of  the 
American  people  ?  Do  we  not  see  here  symp- 
toms of  the  same  state  of  mind  which  is  the 
source  of  the  traditional  fairness  and  impar- 
tiality of  the  American  commonwealth  toward 
the  manifold  creeds  and  religious  denomina- 
tions, of  the  preeminently  experimental  bent 
of  American  science,  of  the  decidedly  practical 
type  of  American  life  even  in  its  religious  and 
ethical  aspects  ?  Do  we  not  see  here  an  antici- 
pation of  the  truly  American  conviction,  — 
American  in  spite  of  demagogues  and  jingoes, 
—  the  conviction  that  freedom  has  no  more 
dangerous  enemy  than  blind  enthusiasm  for 
any  theory  or  any  party  principle  ? 

Intimately  associated  with  this  thoroughly 
masculine  sense  of  reality,  and  again  closely 
akin  to  American  character,  is  the  glorification 
of  work  and  deed  which  shines  forth  with  such 
beneficent  and  freeing  splendor  from  all  of 
Goethe's  works,  from  Gbtz  von  Berlichingen 
down  to  the  Second  Part  of  Faust ,  and  no  less 
from  his  own  life.  The  fundamental  import- 
ance of  this  conception   for   Goethe's  whole 


GOETHE'S   MESSAGE  TO  AMERICA    59 

view  of  the  world  is  in  the  first  place  proved 
by  a  superabundance  of  individual  utterances, 
which,  made  at  widely  separated  times  and 
on  most  different  occasions,  all  agree  in  this, 
—  that  man  acquires  true  freedom  only  by  — 
action.  "  Ah,  writing  is  but  busy  idleness," 
says  Gotz ;  "  it  wearies  me.  While  I  am 
writing  what  I  have  done,  I  lament  the  mis- 
spent time  in  which  I  might  do  more."  Faust 
translates  the  first  line  of  the  Gospel  accord- 
ing to  John  by,  "  In  the  beginning  was  the 
Deed  ; "  and  at  the  end  of  his  life  he  draws 
the  balance  of  his  earthly  experience  in  the 
words,  "  Enjoyment  makes  debased,"  and, 
"  The  deed  is  everything,  the  glory  naught !  " 
And  more  personally  still  Goethe  expresses 
this  same  thought  in  his  Maxims  and  Reflex- 
ions :  "  Endeavor  to  do  your  duty,  and  you 
know  at  once  what  you  are.  What  is  your 
duty?  The  demand  of  the  day."  Under  the 
title  "  Five  Things,"  he  lays  down  in  the 
Divan  this  succinct  and  intensely  practical  rule 
of  life  :  — 

What  makes  time  short  to  me  ? 
Activity  ! 

What  makes  it  long  and  spiritless  ? 
Idleness  ! 


60      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

What  brings  us  to  debt  ? 
To  delay  and  forget! 
What  makes  us  succeed  ? 
Decision  with  speed  ! 
How  to  fame  to  ascend  ? 
One's  self  to  defend! 

And  as  a  last  sacred  bequest  he  leaves  to  his 
friends  the  message  :  — 

Solemn  duty's  daily  observation  — 
More  than  this  it  needs  no  revelation. 

But  not  only  in  such  isolated  though  sig- 
nificant utterances  has  Goethe  expressed  his 
conviction  of  the  saving  quality  of  work  ;  his 
whole  moral  attitude  is  determined  by  this  one 
idea.  Goethe  shares  with  the  Christian  religion 
a  strong  sense  of  the  sinfulness  of  human 
nature  and  of  the  necessity  of  redemption. 
With  the  Christian  religion  he  sees  the  true 
aim  of  life  in  the  delivery  from  hereditary 
weakness,  in  the  victory  of  mind  over  matter. 
But  of  all  church  conceptions  none  was  ever 
mOre  foreign  to  him  than  the  idea  of  repentance 
as  a  condition  of  the  soul's  salvation.  Repent- 
ance seemed  to  him  something  entirely  nega- 
tive and  unproductive,  a  gratuitous  and  useless 
self-humiliation.  Not  through  contrition  and 
self-chastisement,  but  through  discipline  and 


GOETHE'S  MESSAGE  TO  AMERICA    61 

self-reliance,  he  thought,  is  the  way  to  per- 
fection. Eor  this  reason,  throughout  his  life 
he  kept  as  much  as  possible  aloof  from  all 
influences  which  seemed  to  endanger  his  self- 
possession,  such  as  pain,  care,  grief,  fear  ;  while 
he  incessantly  and  systematically  cultivated  in 
himself  and  others  whatever  tends  to  heighten 
the  feeling  of  self,  as  joy,  cheerfulness,  hope, 
courage.  For  this  reason,  Wilhelm  Meister 
finds  lasting  satisfaction  in  calm  renunciation 
of  a  happiness  which  lies  outside  the  limits  of 
his  nature,  and  in  the  firm  conviction  that  by 
this  very  renunciation  he  insures  his  true  spir- 
itual freedom.  For  this  reason,  finally,  Faust 
atones  for  his  guilt,  not  by  self-destruction, 
but  by  a  life  devoted  to  freedom  and  progress. 
And  this  leads  us  to  the  third  manifestation 
of  Goethe's  individualism,  which  most  preemi- 
nently points  to  the  spirit  of  modern  Ameri- 
can life,  —  his  belief  in  the  saving  power  of — 
unceasing  progress.  As  in  the  development 
of  the  earth,  of  plant  and  animal  life,  he  saw 
progress  not  in  sudden  and  unexpected  con- 
vulsions, but  in  gradual  and  steady  transforma- 
tion, so  in  spiritual  matters,  also,  he  found  the 
essence  of  personal  life  not  in  ecstatic  emotions 
and  violent  upheavals,  but  in  an  unremitting 


62      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

and  even  growth  from  one  mental  state  to 
another,  until  at  last  a  condition  s,hould  be 
reached  in  which  the  fetters  of  earthly  person- 
ality would  fall  away,  and  the  individual  spirit 
be  drawn  into  the  restless  movement  of  the 
universal  spirit. 

Im  Grenzenlosen  sich  zu  finden 

Wird  gem  der  Einzelne  verschwinden, 

Da  lost  sich  aller  Ueberdruss  ; 

Statt  heissem  Wiinschen,  wildem  Wollen, 

Statt  last' gem  Fordern,  strengem  Sollen, 

Sich  aufzugeben  ist  Genuss. 

Weltseele,  komm',  uns  zu  durchdringen! 
Dann  mit  dem  Weltgeist  selbst  zu  ringen 
Wird  unsrer  Krafte  Hochberuf. 
Teilnejimend  fiihren  gute  Geister, 
Gelinde  leitend,  hochste  Meister, 
Zu  dem,  der  Alles  schafFt  und  schuf. 

Und  umzuschafFen  das  Geschaffhe, 
Damit  sich's  nicht  zum  Starren  waffne, 
Wirkt  euiges,  lebendiges  Tun. 
Und  was  nicht  war,  nun  will  es  werden, 
Zu  reinen  Sonnen,  farbigen  Erden, 
In  keinem  Falle  darf  es  ruhn. 

Es  soil  sich  regen,  schaffend  handeln, 
Erst  sich  gestalten,  dann  verwandeln  ; 
-heinbar  steht's  Momente  still. 


GOETHE'S   MESSAGE  TO  AMERICA    63 

Das  Ewige  regt  sich  fort  in  Allen  : 
Denn  Alles  muss  in  Nichts  zerfallen, 
Wenn  es  im  Sein  beharren  will.1 

Might  one  not  say :  Here  there  is  a  dream 
of  the  life  beyond,  here  there  is  a  prophetic 
delineation  of  the  future  world,  such  as  might 
well  have  presented  itself  to  Goethe's  eye  as  a 
continuation  and  completion  of  modern  Ameri- 
can life,  with  its  endless  movement,  change, 
and  restless  striving?  It  is,  at  any  rate,  well 
worth  noticing  that  not  long  after  this  poem 
was  written  Goethe  expressed  himself  on  ques- 
tions of  the  political  and  commercial  life  of 
the  United  States  in  a  manner  which  betrays 
an  extraordinary  insight  into  the  vital  prob- 
lems and  tasks  of  our  national  development. 
Through  Alexander  von  Humboldt  Goethe 
was  informed,  in  1827,  of  the  project  of  a 
Panama  canal,  and  the  octogenarian  listened 
to  this  project  with  a  youthful  eagerness  and 
enthusiasm,  as  though  it  concerned  an  under- 
taking in  his  own  immediate  neighborhood. 
"All  this,"  he  said  to  Eckermann,  "is  left  to 
the  future  and  to  wide-reaching  enterprise. 
This  much,  however,  is  certain  :  if  a  canal  is 

1  So  far  as  I  know,  this  wonderful  poem  has  never  been 
translated  into  English  ;  and  it  seems  indeed  untranslatable. 


64      GERMAN  IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

constructed,  through  which  vessels  of  every 
size  and  cargo  may  go  from  the  Gulf  of  Mex- 
ico to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  there  will  result  from 
it  incalculable  consequences  for  the  whole  civi- 
lized and  uncivilized  world.  I  should  be  sur- 
prised, therefore,  if  the  United  States  would 
let  the  opportunity  pass  of  getting  such  a 
work  into  its  hands.  It  is  to  be  foreseen  that 
this  youthful  republic,  with  its  decided  ten- 
dency toward  the  west,  will  have  annexed  and 
populated,  within  thirty  or  forty  years,  even 
the  wide  areas  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
It  is  also  to  be  foreseen  that  along  the  whole 
Pacific  coast,  where  nature  has  formed  the 
roomiest  and  safest  harbors,  there  will  arise, 
in  course  of  time,  very  important  cities,  which 
will  serve  as  points  of  commerce  between  the 
United  States  and  China.  In  that  case,  how- 
ever, it  will  be  not  only  desirable,  but  almost 
indispensable,  for  men-of-war  as  well  as  mer- 
chantmen to  maintain  a  quicker  connection 
between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  coast  of 
North  America  than  has  been  heretofore  possi- 
ble. I  repeat,  then  :  it  is  absolutely  necessary 
for  the  United  States  to  construct  and  control 
a  passage  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  and  I  am  sure  thev  will  accom- 


GOETHE'S  MESSAGE  TO  AMERICA    65 

plish  it.  I  shall  not  live  to  see  it ;  but  it 
might  well  be  worth  the  while  on  that  account 
to  stand  it  here  for  another  fifty  years." 

II 

Goethe  is  not  only  a  representative  of  free- 
dom ;  he  is  also,  and  in  a  still  more  peculiar 
sense,  a  representative  of  culture. 

What  is  culture?  Does  it  consist  in  the 
refinement  of  the  senses,  in  the  increase  of 
needs,  in  the  perfection  of  talents,  in  the  acqui- 
sition of  knowledge,  in  the  widening  of  the 
intellectual  horizon  ?  All  these  elements  con- 
tribute to  produce  culture,  but  they  are  not 
culture.  Culture  is  not  an  accomplishment, 
but  a  state  of  mind.  Culture  he  alone  has 
who  realizes  the  relation  of  his  accomplish- 
ments, whatever  they  may  be,  to  the  larger 
life  of  which  he  forms  a  part ;  whose  aim  in 
heightening  his  own  personality  is  only  to  make 
it  better  fitted  for  service  to  the  community. 
The  striving  for  true  culture,  therefore,  con- 
tains a  democratic  as  well  as  an  aristocratic 
tendency.  It  is  aristocratic ;  for  it  tends  to 
give  to  the  most  refined,  the  best  schooled, 
the  most  fully  developed,  the  part  in  public 
life  which  is  their  due.    It  is  democratic ;  for 


66      GERMAN  : IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

it  is  bound  to  no  class  and  no  rank,  and  it 
increases  the  feeling  of  public  responsibility 
in  direct  proportion  to  the  increase  of  personal 
attainments. 

This,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  is  the  conception 
of  culture  which  is  becoming  more  and  more 
dominant  among  the  best  representatives  of 
American  civilization.  To  be  sure,  there  are 
still  not  a  few  of  our  college  professors  and 
college  alumni  who  think  that  culture  is  bound 
up  with  the  possession  of  certain  magic  for- 
mulae, as  the  verbs  in  fuy  or  the  ablative  ab- 
solute, or  the  Thirty-Ninth  Theorem.  But  it 
certainly  seems  as  though  the  rule  of  such  magic 
formulae  were  nearing  its  end,  even  in  academic 
circles ;  it  certainly  seems  as  though  the  time 
were  not  far  distant  when  the  conviction  will 
have  become  universal  that  every  kind  of  know- 
ledge and  every  kind  of  accomplishment  may 
lead  to  genuine  culture,  provided  that  this 
knowledge  and  this  accomplishment  have  been 
acquired  in  a  thorough  manner  and  are  em- 
ployed in  such  a  way  as  to  benefit  the  commu- 
nity. 

As  to  Goethe,  it  is  perfectly  obvious  that 
his  conception  of  culture  entirely  agrees  with 
the  view  just  propounded.    Some  critics  have 


GOETHE'S   MESSAGE  TO  AMERICA    67 

taken  offense  at  the  sudden  turn  from  classic 
sublimity  to  practical  reality  which  marks  the 
end  of  Faust's  career.  To  me  this  turn  is  the 
most  beautiful  proof  of  the  noble  large-mind- 
edness  of  Goethe's  ideal  of  culture.  Faust  has 
gone  through  the  world  in  all  its  length  and 
breadth ;  he  has  felt  the  highest  happiness 
and  the  deepest  woe ;  he  has  seen  the  splen- 
dor of  an  imperial  court  and  experienced  the 
intrigues  of  political  life ;  he  has  passed  in  re- 
view the  grotesquely  fantastic  figures  of  medi- 
aeval folk-lore  and  the  heroic  forms  of  classic 
legend  ;  his  striving  for  complete  humanity 
has  thus  acquired  ever  fuller  and  richer  reality  ; 
and  how  does  this  striving  now  culminate? 
Wherein  does  he  gain  final  and  lasting  satis- 
faction ?  Therein  that  he  puts  all  his  know- 
ledge and  accomplishments,  all  his  experience 
and  intuition,  at  the  service  of  the  common 
need;  therein  that,  standing  "on  a  free  soil 
with  a  free  people,"  shoulder  to  shoulder  with 
his  brethren,  in  daily  renewed  toil  he  fights 
the  cause  of  the  common  man.  Is  not  this  a 
striking  glorification  of  the  principle  that  the 
essential  thing  in  culture  is  not  the  What,  but 
the  How  ;  that  its  measure  is  not  a  certain 
amount  of  knowledge  and  accomplishments, 


68      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

but  the  state  of  mind  in  which  these  acqui- 
sitions are  employed  ?  Is  it  not  a  shining 
symbol  of  the  necessity  of  the  submission  of 
the  individual,  even  the  most  refined  indi- 
vidual, to  the  common  weal  ?  Is  it  not  a 
poetic  anticipation  of  the  ideal  for  which  our 
whole  age  is  struggling,  and  on  whose  realiz- 
ation depends  the  future  of  the  American 
people,  —  the  reconciliation  and  amalgamation 
of  intellectual  aristocracy  with  democratic  or- 
ganization of  society? 

Three  practical  consequences  which  may  be 
drawn  from  this  submission  of  the  individual 
to  the  whole,  which  indeed  have  been  drawn 
by  Goethe  himself,  seem  to  me  of  especial 
significance  for  American  life. 

First,  the  necessity  of  self-limitation,  if  the 
individual  is  really  to  accomplish  something 
for  the  whole.  On  this  point  Goethe  has  ex- 
pressed himself  in  a  manner  which  cannot  help 
being  a  welcome  message  to  those  of  us  who 
expect  from  the  specialization  of  studies  not  a 
narrowing,  but  a  deepening  of  culture.  "Many- 
sidedness,"  he  says,  "  prepares  only  the  ele- 
ment in  which  the  one-sided  can  work.  Now 
is  the  time  for  the  one-sided  ;  well  for  him 
who  comprehends  it,  and  who  works  for  him- 


GOETHE'S  MESSAGE  TO  AMERICA    69 

self  and  others  in  this  spirit.    Practice  till  you 
are  an  able  violinist,  and  be  assured   that  the 
director  will  have  pleasure  in  assigning  you  a 
place  in  the  orchestra.    Make  an  instrument^ 
of  yourself,  and  wait  and  see  what  sort  of  place     i 
humanity  will    grant   you    in   universal    lifi^J 
Every  one  needs  to  serve  from  the  lowest  rank 
upward.   To  limit  one's  self  to  one  craft  is  the 
best.    To  the  narrow  mind  it  will  be,  after  all, 
a  craft ;  to  the  more  intelligent,  an  art ;  and 
/the  most  enlightened,  when  he  does  one  thing, 
does  everything,  —  or,   to  be  less   paradoxi- 
cal, in  the  one  thing  which  he  does  rightly  he 
beholds  the  semblance  of  everything  that  is 
rightly  done." 

Secondly,  the  necessity  of  a  reverent  attitude 
toward  the  large  whole  of  which  the  individual 
is  only  an  insignificant  part.  "  Freedom  lies 
not  in  this,"  says  Goethe,  "  that  we  are  not 
willing  to  acknowledge  anything  above  us, 
but  that  we  revere  what  is  above  us.  For 
by  revering  it  we  raise  ourselves  to  its  level, 
and  evince  by  our  recognition  that  we  our- 
selves have  the  higher  in  us,  and  are  worthy 
of  being  part  of  it."  Words  like  these  —  words 
which  are  borne  out  by  Goethe's  habitual  at- 
titude toward  small  things  as  well  as  great  — 


70      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

may  well  serve  to  rectify  certain  defects  of 
American  life  brought  about  by  exaggerated 
individualism. 

Finally,  the  assurance  that  this  reverent  at- 
titude toward  the  larger  whole,  of  which  each 
of  us  forms  a  part,  is  the  best  foundation  for 
genuine  enjoyment.  The  joylessness  so  widely 
spread  in  American  life  is  caused,  in  part  at 
least,  by  the  absence  of  this  feeling  of  rever- 
ence. We  hasten  and  hurry  after  a  distant, 
unknown  happiness,  and  trample  in  the  dust 
the  flowers  which  blossom  round  about  us. 
Titan-like  we  pile  Pelion  upon  Ossa,  forget- 
ting that  divine  joy  is  to  be  found  only  upon 
the  calm  heights  of  Mount  Olympus.  How 
different  Goethe!  To  be  sure,  in  a  moment 
of  discouragement  he  once  said  that  his  life, 
after  all,  had  been  nothing  but  toil  and  trou- 
ble, the  continual  rolling  of  a  stone  which 
had  to  be  lifted  ever  anew,  and  that  in  the 
seventy-five  years  upon  which  he  was  looking 
back,  he  had  had  not  four  weeks  of  real  com- 
fort. But  these  very  words  show  the  infinite 
capacity  of  his  reverent  soul  for  true  enjoy- 
ment. For  in  spite  of  his  unfulfilled  desires, 
in  spite  of  his  consciousness  of  the  fragmen- 
tariness  and    insufficiency  of  human   life,  he 


GOETHE'S  MESSAGE  TO  AMERICA    71 

retained  to  his  last  moment  the  power  of  de- 
riving joy  from  the  apparently  most  insig- 
nificant source,  of  losing  himself  in  worshipful 
feeling  for  the  small  wonders  that  surround 
us.  A  few  weeks  before  his  death  he  wrote* 
to  Boisseree  :  "  I  have  now  come  to  my  limit, 
in  this  sense :  that  I  begin  to  believe  where 
others  despair,  those,  namely,  who  expect  too 
much  from  knowledge,  and  thereby  are  led 
to  deem  the  greatest  treasures  of  mankind  as 
naught.  Thus  we  are  driven  from  the  whole 
to  the  part,  and  from  the  part  to  the  whole, 
whether  we  will  or  not." 

Ill 

A  little  episode  from  the  German  War  of 
Liberation  may  give  us  an  idea  of  how  the 
figure  of  Goethe  stood  before  the  minds  of  the 
noble  youths  who  at  that  time  flocked  from 
the  colleges  and  universities  to  the  defense  of 
their  country.  It  is  an  incident  which  hap- 
pened to  a  company  of  Liitzow  volunteers  at 
the  beginning  of  the  campaign  of  18 13,  in  the 
town  of  Meissen.  A  member  of  this  company 
—  Friedrich  Foerster,  the  friend  of  Theodor 
Koerner  —  relates  the  occurrence  as  follows  : 
"We  had  just  finished  our  morning  song  in 


72     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

front  of  the  inn  in  which  our  captain  was  quar- 
tered, when  I  saw  a  man  whose  features  seemed 
familiar  to  me  entering  a  mail  coach.  I  could 
hardly  believe  my  eyes  when  I  saw  it  was 
Goethe  !  Having  at  once  communicated  the 
glorious  discovery  to  my  comrades,  I  ap- 
proached the  coach  with  a  military  salute  and 
said:  '  I  beg  to  report  to  your  Excellency  that 
a  company  of  Royal  Prussian  Volunteers  of 
the  Black  Rifle  Corps,  en  route  for  Leipzig, 
have  drawn  up  before  your  headquarters  and 
desire  to  salute  your  Excellency.'  The  cap- 
tain gave  the  command  {  Present  arms  !'  and  I 
called,  'The  poet  of  all  poets,  Goethe,  hurrah  ! ' 
The  band  played,  and  the  whole  company 
cheered.  He  touched  his  cap  and  nodded 
kindly.  Now  I  once  more  stepped  up  to  him 
and  said  :  c  It  is  no  use  for  your  Excellency 
to  try  to  keep  your  incognito  ;  the  Black 
Riflemen  have  sharp  eyes,  and  to  meet  Goethe 
at  the  beginning  of  our  march  was  too  good 
an  omen  to  pass  unnoticed.  We  ask  from  you 
a  blessing  for  our  arms  !  '  '  With  all  my  heart,' 
he  said.  I  held  out  my  gun  and  sword  ;  he 
laid  his  hand  on  them  and  said  :  (  March  for- 
ward with  God  !  And  may  all  good  things  be 
granted    to   your  joyous   German  courage  ! ' 


GOETHE'S   MESSAGE  TO  AMERICA    73 

While  we  again  cheered  him,  still  saluting  he 
drove  past  us." 

To  us  Americans  this  little  scene  from  the 
"  Holy  War"  of  the  Germans  may  well  sym- 
bolize our  own  relation  to  Goethe.  We  too 
are  engaged  in  a  holy  war ;  we  too  are  fight- 
ing for  the  highest  ideals  of  life,  the  freedom 
and  culture  of  our  people ;  we  too  ask  the 
great  man  whose  prophetic  eye  so  clearly  fore- 
saw our  destiny  to  bless  our  arms. 


II.     SCHILLER'S    MESSAGE   TO 
MODERN    LIFE1 

However  widely  opinions  may  differ  as  to 
the  greatness  of  Schiller  the  writer,  the  thinker, 
the  historian,  or  even  the  poet,  there  can  be 
no  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  greatness 
of  Schiller  the  apostle  of  the  perfect  life.  His 
own  life  was  filled  by  one  central  idea.  Every 
line  written  by  him,  every  deed  done  by  him, 
proclaim  the  fact  that  he  felt  himself  to  be  the 
bearer  of  a  sacred  message  to  humanity,  and 
that  the  consciousness  of  this  high  office  in- 
spired, ennobled,  hallowed  his  whole  existence. 
It  seems  proper  at  the  hundredth  anniver- 
sary of  the  passing  away  of  this  great  prophet 
briefly  to  define  the  message  to  the  spreading 
of  which  he  devoted  his  earthly  career,  and 
to  ask  ourselves  what  this  message  means  to 
us  of  to-day. 

The  central  idea  of  Schiller's  literary  activity 
is  bound  up  with  his  conception  of  the  beauti- 

1   An  address  delivered  in  1905,  at  the  Schiller  centennial 
celebration  at  Harvard  University. 


SCHILLER'S    MESSAGE  75 

ful.  Beauty  was  to  him  something  vastly  more 
significant  than  the  empirical  conception  of  it 
as  a  quality  exciting  pleasurable  emotions  im- 
plies. It  was  to  him  a  divine  essence,  inti- 
mately allied,  if  not  synonymous,  with  absolute 
goodness  and  absolute  truth.  It  was  to  him  a 
principle  of  conduct,  an  ideal  of  action,  the 
goal  of  highest  aspiration,  the  mark  of  noblest 
citizenship,  the  foremost  remedy  of  the  evils 
besetting  an  age  which  seemed  to  him  depraved 
and  out  of  joint.  Art  was  to  him  a  great  edu- 
cational force,  a  power  making  for  progress, 
enlightenment,  perfection  ;  and  the  mission  of 
the  artist  he  saw  in  the  uplifting  of  society,  in 
the  endeavor  to  elevate  public  standards,  in 
work  for  the  strengthening,  deepening,  and  — 
if  need  be  —  remodeling,  of  national  character. 

What  was  Schiller's  attitude  toward  the 
great  national  problems  of  his  own  age  ? 

Schiller  lived  at  a  time  when  the  very  foun- 
dations of  German  political  greatness  appeared 
to  be  crumbling  away.  Of  the  ancient  glory 
of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  —  the  pride  of 
former  generations  —  hardly  a  vestige  was  left. 
The  civic  independence  and  political  power  of 
the  German  city-republics  of  the  Renaissance 
had  come  to  be  nothing  but  a  shadowy  tradi- 


76      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

tion.  Public  life  was  hemmed  in  by  a  thousand 
and  one  varieties  of  princely  despotism  and  bu- 
reaucratic misgovernment,  by  class  monopoly, 
by  territorial  jealousies,  by  local  obstructions 
to  trade  and  industry,  by  serfdom,  by  com- 
plete political  apathy  of  the  ruled  as  well  as  the 
rulers.  No  wonder  that  a  nation  which  lacked 
the  most  fundamental  prerequisites  of  national 
consciousness  was  powerless  to  withstand 
foreign  aggression,  and  found  itself  dismem- 
bered, limb  by  limb,  in  the  furious  onslaught 
of  Napoleonic  imperialism. 

Out  of  this  bondage  to  external  conditions 
the  German  spirit  freed  itself  by  retreating  — 
so  to  speak  —  into  the  souls  of  a  few  great  men ; 
men  faithful  to  the  legacy  of  the  German  past ; 
faithful  to  the  ideal  of  personality  held  up  by 
Walther  von  der  Vogelweide,  by  the  Mystics, 
by  Luther,  by  Leibniz  ;  faithful  to  the  inerad- 
icable German  striving  for  the  deepening  and 
intensifying  of  the  inner  life.  The  greatest  of 
these  men — builders  from  within,  as  one  might 
call  them,  or  renewers  of  the  national  body 
through  reawakening  of  the  national  soul  — 
were  Kant,  Goethe,  and  Schiller.  Kant's  ap- 
peal is  an  appeal  to  the  conscience.  In  this 
fleeting   world  of  appearances,  where   every- 


SCHILLER'S   MESSAGE  77 

thing  is  subject  to  doubt  and  misrepresenta- 
tion, there  stands  out  one  firm  and  incontro- 
vertible fact,  the  fact  that  we  feel  ourselves 
moral  beings.  The  moral  law,  residing  within 
ourselves,  is  felt  by  us  instinctively  as  our  in- 
nermost essence,  and  at  the  same  time  as  the 
only  direct  and  unmistakable  revelation  of  the 
divine.  In  submission  to  this  law,  therefore, 
not  in  the  gratification  of  our  desires,  does 
man's  true  freedom  lie ;  obedience  to  the  dic- 
tates of  duty  is  the  only  road  to  the  perfect 
life.  If  Kant  addresses  himself  to  the  moral 
sense,  both  Goethe  and  Schiller  address  them- 
selves to  our  artistic  nature  ;  but  while  Goethe 
accentuates  the  receptive  side  of  our  artistic 
being,  Schiller  accentuates  its  creative  side. 
To  Goethe  life  appeared  as  an  unending  op- 
portunity for  gathering  in  impressions,  for 
widening  our  sympathies,  for  enriching  our 
imagination,  for  heightening  our  sense  of  the 
grandeur  of  all  existence;  universality  of  cul- 
ture was  to  him  the  goal  of  endeavor.  To 
Schiller,  life  appeared  as  an  unending  oppor- 
tunity for  penetrating  into  the  essence  of  things, 
for  finding  the  unity  lying  back  of  the  con- 
trasts of  the  universe,  of  matter  and  spirit,  of 
instinct  and  reason,  and   for  expressing  this 


78      GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

unity  in  the  language  of  art;  striving  for  inner 
harmony,  for  oneness  with  self  and  the  world 
was  to  him  the  supreme  task  of  man. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  in  the  actual  world 
about  him,  in  the  society  of  his  time,  Schiller 
found  little  that  seemed  to  him  to  make  for 
this  ideal  of  inner  harmony.  Indeed,  he  felt 
that  this  ideal  could  be  attained  only  in  direct 
opposition  to  the  spirit  of  his  age.  The  des- 
potic state  of  the  eighteenth  century,  with  its 
shallow  opportunism,  its  bureaucratic  narrow- 
ness, its  lack  of  popular  energy,  seemed  to  him 
the  sworn  enemy  of  all  higher  strivings,  and 
fatal  to  the  development  of  a  harmonious,  well 
rounded  inner  life.  "  When  the  state,"  he 
says  in  his  Letters  on  the  Aesthetic  Education 
of  Man,  "  when  the  state  makes  the  office 
the  measure  of  the  man ;  when  it  honors  in 
one  of  its  subjects  memory  alone,  in  another 
clerical  sagacity,  in  a  third  mechanical  clever- 
ness ;  when  in  one  case,  indifferent  toward 
character,  it  insists  only  on  knowledge,  in  an- 
other condones  the  most  flagrant  intellectual 
obtuseness  if  accompanied  by  outward  disci- 
pline and  loyalty,  —  is  it  a  wonder  that  in 
order  to  cultivate  the  one  talent  which  brings 
honor  and  reward  all  other  gifts  of  the  mind 


SCHILLER'S    MESSAGE  79 

are  neglected  ?  To  be  sure,  a  genius  will  rise 
above  the  barriers  of  his  profession  ;  but  the 
mass  of  mediocre  talents  must  of  necessity 
consume  their  whole  strength  in  their  official 
existence.  And  thus  individual,  concrete  life 
is  gradually  being  annihilated  in  order  that  the 
abstract  shadow  of  the  whole  may  drag  out  its 
barren  existence."  In  such  an  age,  then,  this 
is  Schiller's  reasoning,  the  man  who  wants  to 
be  himself,  who  strives  for  inner  harmony, 
must  live  as  a  stranger  to  his  surroundings,  a 
stranger  to  his  time,  he  must  remove  himself 
from  the  distracting  and  belittling  influence  of 
the  ambitions  of  the  multitude,  he  must  scorn 
participation  in  the  sordid  quest  for  outward 
success,  he  must  fill  himself  with  the  spirit  of 
what  the  best  and  the  finest  of  all  ages  have 
dreamed  and  accomplished,  he  must  dwell  in 
the  idea  of  the  Beautiful. 

The  striving  for  the  beautiful  was  to  Schiller 
a  call  as  sacred  and  solemn  as  the  submission 
to  duty  was  to  Kant ;  nay,  it  seemed  to  him 
to  imply  a  higher  conception  of  humanity 
than  the  moral  law.  Is  it  really  so,  as  Kant 
would  have  us  believe,  that  reason  must  be 
absolute  sovereign  of  the  will  ?  that  instinct 
must  unconditionally  surrender  ?   that  it    be- 


80      GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

longs  to  the  essence  of  the  good  that  it  is  en- 
forced and  brought  about  against  the  desires 
of  the  instinct  ?  No,  says  Schiller,  this  cannot 
be.  For  it  is  impossible  to  assume  that  only 
by  suppression  of  a  part  of  our  nature  we 
could  achieve  its  perfection,  that  only  by  sti- 
fling our  inclinations  we  could  live  up  to  our 
duty.  The  good  consists  not  in  the  repression 
of  our  instincts,  but  in  ennobling  them  ;  not  in 
the  mutilation  of  our  nature,  but  in  develop- 
ing it ;  not  in  stagnation,  but  in  the  free  play 
of  our  powers;  not  in  ascetic  world-denial, 
but  in  manly  world-enjoyment, —  in  a  word, 
in  the  creation  of  the  beautiful.  Beauty  is  the 
perfect  union  of  matter  and  spirit,  of  sense 
and  reason  ;  it  is  the  harmony  of  the  real  and 
the  ideal,  of  the  inner  world  and  the  outer. 
As  spirit,  we  are  active,  determining,  mascu- 
line ;  as  beings  of  the  senses,  we  are  receptive, 
determinable,  feminine.  Our  task  is  to  unite 
these  two  parts  of  our  being,  to  reconcile 
matter  and  form,  instinct  and  reason;  to 
merge  the  finite  and  the  infinite.  In  doing 
this,  —  nay,  even  in  endeavoring  to  do  this,  — 
we  create  the  beautiful,  we  become  ourselves 
beautiful,  we  fulfill  the  worthiest  mission  of 
humanitv,  we  reveal  the  divine  in  man. 


SCHILLER'S    MESSAGE  81 

It  is  clear  that  from  this  point  of  view  art 
comes  to  be  the  highest  of  all  human  activities. 
All  other  activities  set  only  a  part  of  our  be- 
ing in  motion ;  they  do  not  develop  our  full- 
est humanity.  The  pleasures  of  the  senses 
we  enjoy  merely  as  individuals,  without  the 
species  immanent  in  us  being  affected  thereby. 
Nobody  but  I  myself  has  the  slightest  part  in 
the  fact  that  I  enjoy  —  let  us  say  oysters  on 
shell.  The  pleasures  of  the  senses,  therefore, 
we  cannot  lift  into  the  sphere  of  the  univer- 
sal. The  functions  of  reason  we  fulfill  chiefly 
as  species,  without  our  individual  self  being 
deeply  stirred  thereby.  If  I  come  to  under- 
stand some  mathematical  law,  for  instance,  the 
Thirty-Ninth  Theorem,  this  is  not  so  much  an 
individual  experience  as  a  demonstration  of 
my  belonging  to  the  species  of  homo  sapiens. 
Our  intellectual  pleasures,  therefore,  cannot 
fully  enter  into  the  sphere  of  personality. 
The  beautiful  alone  we  enjoy  both  as  individ- 
uals and  as  species,  that  is,  as  representatives 
of  the  species  ;  and  the  artist  who  creates,  the 
public  who  sympathetically  receive  the  beau- 
tiful, thereby  lift  themselves  to  the  highest 
plane  accessible  to  man. 

I  shall    not    here    dwell    on    the    question 


82      GERMAN    IDEALS   OF   TO-DAY 

whether  this  apotheosis  of  art  does  not  do 
injustice  to  other  forms  of  human  activity. 
What  led  Schiller  to  these,  we  should  be  in- 
clined to  say,  over-statements,  was  probably 
the  absence  in  the  Germany  of  his  time  of  a 
healthy  public  life  which  could  have  taught 
him  the  value  of  any  kind  of  strenuous  pro- 
ductive work.  It  is,  however,  clear  that  this 
very  exaggeration  of  the  mission  of  art  carries 
with  it  an  inspiring  force  akin  to  the  moun- 
tain-removing assurance  of  religious  faith. 
And  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  was  this 
conception  of  art  as  a  great  public  agency,  as 
the  great  atoner  and  harmonizer,  as  the  inter- 
mediator between  the  spirit  and  the  senses,  as 
the  fulfiller  of  the  ideal  of  humanity,  which 
has  given  to  German  literature  of  Schiller's 
time  its  unique,  transcending,  and  enduring 
radiance. 

No  better  characterization  of  this  literature 
could  be  given  than  that  implied  in  the  fol- 
lowing words  from  Schiller's  essay,  On  the  Use 
of  the  Chorus  in  Tragedy  :  "  True  art  has  for 
her  object  not  merely  to  afford  a  transient 
pleasure,  to  excite  to  a  momentary  dream  of 
liberty.  Her  aim  is  to  make  us  intrinsically 
and  absolutely  free  ;  and  this  she  accomplishes 


SCHILLER'S    MESSAGE  83 

by  awakening,  exercising,  and  perfecting  in  us 
a  power  to  remove  to  an  objective  distance  the 
world  of  the  senses,  which  otherwise  only  bur- 
dens us  as  a  dead  weight,  as  a  blind  force,  to 
transform  it  into  the  free  working  of  our  spirit, 
and  thus  to  master  matter  by  means  of  the 
idea." 

Schiller's  own  poetic  activity,  since  the  time 
when  he  had  outgrown  the  turbulent  Storm 
and  Stress  of  his  youth,  was  entirely  given 
over  to  carrying  out  this  ideal.  All  his  ripest 
productions  —  the  philosophical  poems,  the 
ballads,  the  five  great  dramas  from  Wallenstein 
to  William  Tell —  bring  out  the  conflict  of  man 
with  himself  and  the  world,  the  struggle  be- 
tween his  spiritual  longings  and  his  earthly 
desires,  and  they  all  point  to  a  reconciliation 
of  these  contrasts,  to  atonement,  purification, 
peace.  They  all  are  symbols  of  the  perfect 
life.  Whether  we  think  of  such  a  poem  as  The 
Ideal  and  Life,  with  its  brilliant  pictures  of 
man's  endless  striving  for  mastery  over  matter; 
or  of  such  ballads  as  The  Diver,  The  Fight 
with  the  Dragon,  The  Ring  of  Poly  crates,  The 
Cranes  of  Ibycus,  with  their  wonderful  sugges- 
tions of  the  destiny  of  man  and  the  workings 
of  Fate  ;    or  whether  we  review  the  central 


84     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

themes  of  his  principal  dramas  :  in  Wallenstein 
the  conflict  between  selfish  ambition  and  moral 
greatness,  in  Mary  Stuart  the  conflict  in  a 
woman's  soul  between  sensual  passion  and 
repentant  abnegation,  in  The  Maid  of  Orleans 
the  conflict  between  the  human  heart  and  a 
superhuman  task,  in  The  Bride  of  Messina  the 
conflict  between  human  prowess  and  inexora- 
ble Fate,  in  William  Tell  the  conflict  between 
popular  right  and  despotic  usurpation,  —  ev- 
erywhere we  see  human  nature  issue  forth 
from  these  struggles  ennobled,  exalted,  glori- 
fied, even  if  outwardly  defeated  ;  everywhere 
are  we  accorded  foreboding  glimpses,  at  least, 
of  that  higher  realm  where  instinct  and  reason 
have  become  one,  where  doubts,  misgivings, 
uncertainty,  have  fled,  where  beauty,  scorning 
that  which  is  corruptible,  has  put  on  her  in- 
corruptible body,  and  shines  in  transcending, 
eternal,  spiritual  radiance. 

I  have  tried  briefly  to  show  how  the  central 
idea  of  Schiller's  life,  his  conception  of  the 
beautiful,  was  connected  with  his  view  of  the 
society  of  his  time,  how  it  formed  part  of  the 
inner  regeneration  of  German  national  life  at 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Let  me 
add  a  few  words  about  the  significance  which 


SCHILLER'S    MESSAGE  85 

this  conception  of  art  seems  to  have  for  our 
own  age. 

Never  before  has  there  been  a  greater  need 
or  a  greater  opportunity  for  art  to  fulfill  the 
mission  set  to  it  by  Schiller  than  there  is  to- 
day. Again,  as  in  Schiller's  time,  the  strongest 
forces  of  social  life  tend  to  alienate  man  from 
his  own  self,  to  make  him  part  of  a  huge  ma- 
chine, to  prevent  a  full  rounding  out  of  all  his 
faculties.  Politically,  to  be  sure,  great  strides 
have  been  made  during  the  last  hundred  years ; 
the  despotic  methods  of  government,  in  which 
Schiller  saw  the  most  pernicious  bar  to  the  full 
development  of  personality,  have  largely  been 
superseded  by  popular  participation  in  public 
affairs.  But  another,  and  perhaps  graver  dan- 
ger to  the  cultivation  of  the  best  and  the  finest 
in  human  personality  confronts  us  to-day,  the 
overweening,  all-overpowering  influence  of  in- 
dustrialism. The  division  of  labor  in  every 
field  of  activity,  brought  about  by  modern 
methods  of  industrial  production ;  the  fierce 
competition  in  every  domain  of  life,  made 
necessary  by  the  industrial  struggle  for  exist- 
ence ;  the  rapid  ascendency  of  huge  combi- 
nations both  of  capital  and  labor  demanding 
complete  and  unconditional  submission  of  the 


86     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

individual,  —  in  short,  all  the  most  character- 
istic and  most  fundamental  phenomena  of 
modern  society,  militate,  every  one  of  them, 
against  the  growth  of  a  broad,  generous,  com- 
prehensive, thoroughly  sound  inner  life.  Again, 
as  in  Schiller's  time,  although  for  entirely  dif- 
ferent reasons,  men  before  whose  minds  there 
hovers  the  image  of  ideal  mankind  find  them- 
selves inevitably  in  direct  opposition  to  the 
ruling  tendencies  of  the  age ;  again  they  feel 
strangers  in  a  world  whose  din  and  confusion 
blurs  and  distracts  the  noblest  powers  of  the 
mind ;  again  they  grope  about  for  something 
which  will  heal  the  wounds  of  humanity,  which 
will  pacify  the  fierce  tumult  of  social  strife, 
which  will  satisfy  the  deepest  longings  of  the 
soul,  which  will  give  us  at  least  a  symbolic 
anticipation  of  man  in  his  fullness  and  total- 
ity. 

Is  there  not,  then,  a  great  mission  in  the 
world  of  to-day  for  Schiller's  conception  of  art 
to  fulfill  ?  More  than  this,  is  not  Schiller's  con- 
ception of  the  beautiful  the  only  artistic  ideal 
capable  of  becoming  a  great  uplifting  public 
force,  a  power  of  redemption  from  the  distract- 
ing, distorting,  disfiguring  influence  of  mod- 
ern commercialism,  a  tower  of  strength  in  the 


SCHILLER'S    MESSAGE  87 

struggle  for  an  enlightened,  unselfish,  elevated 
national  consciousness  ? 

Let  us  imagine  for  a  moment  what  the 
result  would  be,  if  Schiller's  insistence  on  the 
social  office  of  art  had  come  to  be  generally  ac- 
cepted :  how  different,  for  example,  the  Ameri- 
can stage  would  be,  if  the  managers  of  all  our 
theatres  worked  for  the  elevation  of  the  public 
taste,  instead  of  most  of  them  being  driven  by 
the  desire  for  private  gain  ;  how  different  our 
literature  would  be,  if  every  writer  considered 
himself  responsible  to  the  public  conscience,  if 
the  editors  of  all  our  newspapers  and  maga- 
zines considered  themselves  public  educators  ; 
how  different  our  whole  intellectual  atmosphere 
would  be,  if  the  public  would  scorn  books, 
plays,  pictures,  or  any  works  of  human  craft 
which  did  not  make  for  the  union  of  our  spir- 
itual and  our  sensuous  strivings ;  if,  in  other 
words,  the  cultivation  of  beauty  had  come  to 
be  acknowledged,  as  Schiller  wanted  it  to  be 
acknowledged,  as  a  duty  which  we  owe  not 
only  to  ourselves,  but  also  to  the  community 
and  the  country ;  if  it  had  come  to  be  a  regu- 
lative force  of  our  whole  social  life. 

We  should  then  be  freed  from  the  vain 
pomp  and  senseless  luxury  which  hold  their 


88     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

baneful  sway  over  so  many  of  our  rich,  unfit- 
ting them  for  useful  activity,  poisoning  their 
relation  to  other  classes  of  society,  ever  widen- 
ing the  gulf  between  them  and  the  mass  of  the 
people,  making  their  very  existence  a  menace 
to  the  republic.  We  should  be  saved  from  the 
vulgar  sensationalism  and  the  vicious  volup- 
tuousness which  degrade  most  of  our  theatres 
and  make  them  corrupters  of  morality  instead 
of  givers  of  delight.  We  should  be  spared  the 
hideous  excrescences  of  industrial  competition 
which  disfigure  not  only  the  manufacturing 
districts  of  our  cities,  but  even  deface  our 
meadows  and  woods  and  waterfalls.  We  should 
be  rid  of  the  whims  and  fancies  of  literary 
fashion  which  merely  please  the  idle  and  the 
thoughtless.  We  should  be  relieved  from  the 
morbid,  pseudo-artistic  reveling  in  the  abnor- 
mal and  the  ugly,  which  appeals  only  to  a  super- 
ficial curiosity  without  stirring  or  strengthen- 
ing our  deeper  self.  We  should  have  an  art 
which,  while  true  to  life,  and  by  no  means 
palliating  its  misery  and  its  horrors,  would 
hold  before  us  the  task  of  rising  superior  to 
life's  woes,  of  fulfilling  our  destiny,  of  round- 
ing out  our  whole  being,  of  overcoming  the 
inevitable  conflict  between  instinct  and  duty, 


SCHILLER'S    MESSAGE  89 

between  passion  and  reason,  in  short,  of  striv- 
ing for  the  perfect  life.  Such  an  art  would  in- 
deed be  a  great  public  force  for  good;  such  an 
art,  instead  of  being  the  servant  of  the  rich, 
would  come  to  be  the  spiritual  leader  of  the 
people ;  such  an  art  would  mature  the  finest 
and  most  precious  fruits  of  democracy. 

It  does  not  seem  likely  that  views  like 
these,  fundamentally  true  and  self-evident  as 
they  are,  will  ever  be  generally  accepted.  In 
their  very  nature  they  are  views  which  appeal 
only  to  those  to  whom  the  conception  of  art 
as  a  mere  opportunity  for  amusement  or  dis- 
play is  something  utterly  repulsive  and  con- 
temptible. All  the  more  sacred  is  the  obliga- 
tion of  these  few,  —  and  that  our  own  time 
possesses  such  men,  the  names  of  Tolstoi,  of 
Bjornson,  of  Ibsen,  of  Maeterlinck,  of  Haupt- 
mann,  are  a  happy  reminder,  —  all  the  more 
sacred  is  the  obligation  of  such  men  as  these 
steadfastly  to  adhere  to  the  harmony  between 
the  senses  and  the  spirit  as  the  ultimate  goal 
of  artistic  endeavor. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  underrate  what  men 
like  those  just  mentioned  have  accomplished 
or  what  they  stand  for.  These  men  are  un- 
doubtedly worthy  followers  of  Schiller.    They 


9o     GERMAN   IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

once  more  have  opened  the  eyes  of  mankind 
to  the  fundamental  problems  of  art.  They 
once  more  have  freed  art  from  the  slavery  of 
being  a  mere  toy  and  pastime  of  the  ruling 
classes  ;  they  once  more  have  made  it  a  mouth- 
piece of  suffering,  struggling,  and  aspiring  hu- 
manity. But  has  any  one  of  these  writers  at- 
tained to  that  thoroughly  free  and  thoroughly 
lawful  view  of  life,  that  generous  comprehen- 
sion of  the  rational  as  well  as  the  emotional 
forces  of  man,  that  measured  harmony  of  form 
and  spirit,  which  make  the  very  essence  of 
Schiller's  art  ? 

Nothing  could  be  more  instructive  than  to 
compare  Schiller's  artistic  ideal  with  that  of 
the  two  greatest  of  these  moderns,  and  their 
most  characteristic  representatives,  Leo  Tol- 
stoi and  Henrik  Ibsen.  Both  these  men  have 
as  exalted  an  opinion  of  the  mission  of  art  as 
had  Schiller.  To  them,  as  to  Schiller,  art  is 
essentially  a  means  for  the  regeneration  of  so- 
ciety ;  to  them,  as  to  Schiller,  its  office  is  to 
show  the  way  toward  a  perfect  state  of  human 
existence.  Both  are  unrivaled  masters  in  lay- 
ing bare  the  perplexing  problems,  the  besetting 
falsehoods,  the  secret  sins,  the  tragic  conflicts, 
the  woes  and  horrors,  of  modern  civilization. 


SCHILLER'S    MESSAGE  91 

Both  are  inspired  with  an  invincible  belief  in 
the  society  of  the  future,  in  the  coming  broth- 
erhood of  man,  and  in  their  own  vocation  to 
bring  it  about.  But  must  it  not  be  said  that 
this  society  to  come,  as  conceived  by  Tolstoi 
or  Ibsen,  is  an  utterly  fantastic  fata  morgana, 
a  purely  subjective  day-dream  ?  Can  it  be 
assumed  that  modern  society,  with  its  highly 
complex  and  variegated  occupations,  with  its 
thousand  and  one  gradations  of  national  ac- 
tivity, will  revert  to  the  dead  level  of  the  stolid, 
long-suffering,  uninitiative  Russian  peasant 
whom  Tolstoi  would  have  us  consider  as  the 
type  of  the  unselfish,  loving,  truly  Christian 
life  of  the  future  ?  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
it  possible  to  imagine  that  the  brotherhood  of 
man  can  be  brought  about  by  the  over-individ- 
ualized, tempestuous,  Viking-like  race  of  fight- 
ers and  visionaries  whom  Ibsen  makes  the 
representatives  of  his  own  ideal  of  human  de- 
velopment ?  And  even  if  either  of  these  con- 
ditions were  really  to  come  to  pass,  is  it  not 
clear  that  neither  of  them  could  be  brought 
about  without  a  violent  disruption  of  the  ex- 
isting order  of  things,  —  that  both  Ibsen  and 
Tolstoi,  therefore,  are  fundamentally  subver- 
sive, and  only  with  regard  to  possible  distant 


92     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

effects  of  their   thought  may   be  called  con- 
structive? 

What  they  lack  is  Schiller's  conception  of 
beauty  as  mediator  between  the  sensuous  and 
the  spiritual ;  what  they  lack  is  Schiller's  ap- 
peal to  the  best,  the  most  normal,  the  most 
human  in  man  :  his  natural  desire  for  equipoise, 
for  oneness  with  himself,  for  totality  of  char- 
acter. Schiller's  art  does  not  point  backward, 
as  Tolstoi's  glorification  of  primitiveness  of 
existence  does.  It  does  not  point  into  a  dim, 
shadowy  future,  as  Ibsen's  fantastic  Uebermen- 
schen  do.  It  guides  us  with  firm  hand  toward 
a  well-defined  and  attainable  ideal,  the  ideal  of 
free,  noble,  progressive,  self-restrained  man- 
hood:— 

Der  Menschheit  Wurde  ist  in  eure  Hand  gegeben  ; 

Bewahret  sie  ! 

Sie  sinkt  mit  euch  !    Mit  euch  wird  sie  sich  heben. 

Der  freisten  Mutter  freiste  Sohne, 

Schwingt  euch  mit  festem  Angesicht 

Zum  Strahlensitz  der  hochsten  Schdne  ! 

Um  andre  Kronen  buhlet  nicht. 

Erhebet  euch  mit  kiihnem  Fliigel 

Hoch  iiber  euren  Zeitenlauf ! 

Fern  dammre  schon  in  eurem  Spiegel 

Das  kommende  Jahrhundert  auf ! 


III.    EMERSON    AND    GERMAN 
PERSONALITY ' 

Emerson  was,  above  all,  an  American  ;  the 
love  of  his  people  was  the  controlling  motive 
of  his  whole  life  ;  and  if  we  were  to  express 
the  great  variety  of  his  interests  and  sympa- 
thies by  one  central  ideal,  we  could  probably 
find  no  better  name  for  it  than  American 
culture.  Next  to  his  own  country,  England 
occupied  the  foremost  place  in  his  affections. 
The  history  of  the  English  people  was  to  him 
not  only  the  history  of  the  life  of  his  fore- 
fathers, and  as  such  surrounded  by  the  halo 
of  romance,  but  it  stood  to  him  also  for  a 
most  impressive  object  lesson,  demonstrating 
the  truth  of  the  practical  side  of  his  own  mes- 
sage, the  teachings  of  self-reliance,  tenacity  of 
purpose,  and  common  sense.  It  was  through 
his  delicate  sense  of  artistic  form  that  Emer- 
son was  drawn  toward  Italy  and  France;  and 
no  one  who  has  read  his  estimates  of  Mon- 

1  An  address  delivered  in  1903,  at  the  Emerson  centen- 
nial celebration  in  Concord. 


94     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

taigne  or  Michelangelo  can  fail  to  see  that, 
Puritan  as  he  was,  he  had  a  keen  appreciation 
of  the  genius  of  the  Latin  race.  Germany  was 
the  only  large  country  of  western  Europe 
which  he  never  visited;  the  only  distinguished 
German  with  whom  he  entertained  a  friendly 
correspondence,  Herman  Grimm,  crossed  his 
path  too  late  in  life  to  add  much  to  his  range 
of  vision.  For  the  greatest  German  of  his 
time,  Goethe,  Emerson,  in  spite  of  sincere  ad- 
miration, had  after  all  only  a  limited  under- 
standing; whereas,  against  the  manners  of  the 
ordinary  Teuton  he  even  seems  to  have  had  a 
natural  aversion.  Wherein,  then,  lies  the  jus- 
tification for  emphasizing,  nevertheless,  Emer- 
son's relation  to  Germany?  What  side  of  his 
nature  was  akin  to  German  ways  of  thought 
and  feeling?  What  particular  inspiration  did 
he  receive  from  the  great  masters  of  German 
literature  and  philosophy  ?  What  part  of  his 
own  life-work  has  a  special  significance  for  the 
Germany  of  to-day  ?  These  are  the  questions 
which  I  shall  attempt  briefly  to  answer. 

I 
There  is  a  widely  spread  notion  that  Ger- 
many is  a  land  trodden  down  by  militarism 


EMERSON   AND    THE    GERMANS    95 

and  bureaucracy.  Independence  of  character 
and  personal  initiative,  are,  we  are  told,  ne- 
cessarily crushed  out  by  governmental  meth- 
ods which  force  the  individual,  from  boyhood 
on,  into  a  system  of  complicated  routine  and 
make  him  a  part  of  a  huge,  soulless  mechanism. 
It  would  be  futile  to  deny  that  the  pressure  ex- 
erted upon  the  individual  by  official  authority 
is  greater  in  Germany  than  in  America,  Eng- 
land, France,  or  Italy.  Indeed,  there  is  good 
reason  for  thinking  that  this  very  subordina- 
tion of  the  individual  to  superior  ordinances 
has  had  a  large  share  in  the  extraordinary 
achievements  of  German  statecraft,  strategy, 
industry,  and  science  of  the  last  fifty  years. 
What  I  maintain  is  this :  In  spite  of  the  intense 
supervision  of  personal  conduct,  of  the  supre- 
macy of  drill  and  regulation,  of  the  overwhelm- 
ing sway  of  historical  tradition  and  class  rule, 
in  spite  of  all  this  there  is  to  be  found  in  Ger- 
many a  decidedly  greater  variety  of  individual 
views,  convictions,  principles,  modes  of  life, 
ideals,  in  other  words,  of  individual  character, 
than  in  America.  I  do  not  wish  here  to  ana- 
lyze the  causes  of  this  remarkable  phenome- 
non, beyond  stating  that  one  of  these  causes 
seems  to  me  to  lie  in  the  very  existence  of 


96     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

those  barriers  which  in  Germany  restrict  and 
hem  in  individual  activity.  It  seems  as  though 
the  pressure  from  without  tended  to  force  to 
light  the  life  within.  Certain  it  is  that  the 
German,  while  submitting  to  external  limi- 
tations which  no  American  or  Englishman 
would  tolerate,  is  wont  to  guard  his  intellec- 
tual selfhood  with  a  jealous  eagerness  com- 
pared with  which  the  easy  adaptation  of  the 
American  to  standards  not  his  own  comes 
near  to  being  moral  indifference.  His  inner 
life  the  German  seeks  to  shape  himself;  here 
he  tolerates  no  authority  or  ordinance;  here 
he  is  his  own  master ;  here  he  builds  his  own 
world. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  closely  allied  was 
Emerson's  whole  being  to  this  side  of  Ger- 
man character.  The  moderation  and  harmo- 
niousness  of  his  temper  preserved  him  from 
the  angularity,  the  oddities  and  eccentricities 
which  often  go  with  the  German  insistence 
on  pronounced  intellectual  personality.  On 
this  personality  itself  he  insisted  with  truly 
German  aggressiveness.  Indeed,  it  may  be 
said  that  his  definition  of  the  scholar  as  being 
not  a  thinker,  but  man  thinking,  —  a  defini- 
tion which  is  at  the  root  of  Emerson's  whole 


EMERSON   AND    THE    GERMANS    97 

view  of  intellectual  life,  —  is  an  essentially- 
German  conception,  and  places  Emerson  in 
line  with  those  splendid  defenders  of  personal 
conviction  which  have  embodied  German 
thought  with  all  its  rugged  pugnaciousness, 
from  the  days  of  Luther  to  Lessing  and  Fichte, 
and  finally  to  Schopenhauer  and  Nietzsche. 

A  few  of  the  most  important  manifesta- 
tions of  this  German  love  of  spiritual  indi- 
viduality which  seem  to  me  to  have  a  special 
bearing  upon  Emerson  it  may  be  useful  to  con- 
sider. 

What  else  but  implicit  trust  in  the  supreme 
value  of  the  inner  life  is  it,  if  the  Germans 
much  more  than  other  nations  are  given  to 
expressing  their  contempt  for  appearances,  if 
they  have  a  delight,  sometimes  a  cynic  delight, 
in  exposing  shams  of  any  kind,  if  they  take 
the  business  of  life  with  a  seriousness  that 
often  seems  to  rob  it  of  lightness  of  move- 
ment and  the  gracefulness  of  fleeting  forms'? 
Goethe's  Faust  is,  in  this  respect  also,  a 
true  index  of  national  character.  As  a  work 
of  art  it  is  unwieldy,  uneven,  volcanic,  dis- 
connected, fragmentary,  barbaric.  Scenes  of 
supreme  lyric  power,  of  elemental  passion, 
of  deepest  tragedy,  of  ravishing   poetry,  go 


98     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

side  by  side  with  cynic  raillery,  allegorical 
stammering,  metaphysical  lucubrations,  book- 
ishness,  and  pedantry.  The  sensuous  impres- 
sion of  the  whole  upon  an  unbiased  mind 
cannot  but  be  bewildering  and  disquieting. 
And  yet  there  stands  out  in  it  all  a  mighty 
personality,  a  mighty  will !  The  weaknesses, 
the  falsehoods,  the  frivolities  of  the  day  are 
here  unmasked!  The  real  concern  of  life, 
ceaseless  striving  for  higher  forms  of  activity, 
endless  endeavor  in  the  rounding  out  of  the 
inner  world,  is  brought  home  to  us!  The 
very  defects  and  shortcomings  of  the  form  re- 
veal the  vastness  of  the  spirit  which  refused  to 
be  contracted  into  limited  dimensions  !  That 
thoughts  like  these  were  familiar  to  Emerson, 
that  his  own  habitual  state  of  mind  was  akin 
to  the  temper  here  described,  needs  no  docu- 
mentary demonstration.  But  it  may  not  be 
out  of  place  to  quote  a  few  passages  which 
show  how  fully  conscious  he  was  himself  of 
his  affinity  to  this  side  of  German  character:  — 

What  distinguishes  Goethe  for  French  and  English  read- 
ers is  a  property  which  he  shares  with  his  nation,  —  an 
habitual  reference  to  interior  truth.  The  German  intellect 
wants  the  French  sprightliness,  the  fine  practical  understand- 
ing of  the  English,  and  the  American  adventure  ;  hut  it  has 


EMERSON   AND    THE    GERMANS    99 

a  certain  probity,  which  never  rests  in  a  superficial  perform- 
ance, but  asks  steadily,  To  what  end?  A  German  public 
asks  for  a  controlling  sincerity.  Here  is  activity  of  thought, 
but  what  is  it  for  ?  What  does  the  man  mean  ?  Whence, 
whence  all  these  thoughts  ? 

Talent  alone  cannot  make  a  writer.  There  must  be  a 
man  behind  the  book ;  a  personality  which  by  birth  and 
quality  is  pledged  to  the  doctrines  there  set  forth.  ...  If 
he  cannot  rightly  express  himself  to-day,  the  same  things 
subsist  and  will  open  themselves  to-morrow.  There  lies  the 
burden  on  his  mind,  —  the  burden  of  truth  to  be  declared, 
—  more  or  less  understood;  and  it  constitutes  his  business 
and  calling  in  the  world  to  see  those  facts  through,  and  to 
make  them  known.  What  signifies  that  he  trips  and  stam- 
mers ;  that  his  voice  is  harsh  and  hissing ;  that  his  methods 
or  his  hopes  are  inadequate  ?  That  message  will  find  method 
and  imagery,  articulation  and  melody.  Though  he  were 
dumb,  it  would  speak. 

Closely  allied  with  the  German  contempt 
for  appearances,  and,  like  it,  rooted  in  the  high 
valuation  of  personality,  is  the  often  praised 
delight  of  the  Germans  in  small  things.  He 
who  knows  how  to  enter  lovingly  into  what  is 
outwardly  inconspicuous  and  seemingly  insig- 
nificant, he  who  is  accustomed  to  look  for  full- 
ness of  the  inner  life  even  in  the  humblest 
and  most  circumscribed  spheres  of  society,  to 
him  new  worlds  will  reveal  themselves  in  re- 
gions where  the  hasty,  dissatisfied  glance  dis- 


ioo     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

covers  nothing  but  empty  space.  "  Man  upon 
this  earth,"  says  Jean  Paul,  "would  be  vanity 
and  hollowness,  dust  and  ashes,  vapor  and  a 
bubble, — were  it  not  that  he  felt  himself  to  be 
so.  That  it  is  possible  for  him  to  harbor  such 
a  feeling,  this,  by  implying  a  comparison  of 
himself  with  something  higher  in  himself,  this 
it  is  which  makes  him  the  immortal  creature 
that  he  is."  Here  we  have  the  root  of  that 
German  love  for  still  life,  that  German  ca- 
pacity for  discovering  the  great  in  the  little, 
which  has  given  to  our  literature  such  incom- 
parable characters  as  Jean  Paul's  own  Quintus 
Fixlein,  Wilhelm  Raabe's  Hungerpastor,  or 
Heinrich  Seidel's  Leberecht  Hiihnchen,  which 
even  to-day  makes  Germany  the  land  of  all 
lands  where  in  the  midst  of  the  bewildering 
tumult  of  industrial  and  social  competition 
there  are  to  be  found  hundreds  upon  hun- 
dreds of  men  firmly  determined  to  resist  the 
mad  desire  for  what  is  called  success,  perfectly 
satisfied  to  live  in  a  corner,  unobserved  but 
observing,  at  home  with  themselves,  wedded 
to  some  task,  some  ideal  which,  however  little 
it  may  have  to  do  with  the  pretentious  and 
noisy  world  about  them,  fills  their  souls  and 
sheds  dignity  upon  every  moment  of  their  ex- 


EMERSON  AND  THE  GERMANS     101 

istence.  Is  it  necessary  to  point  out  that  there 
never  lived  an  American  who  in  this  respect 
was  more  closely  akin  to  the  German  temper 
than  Emerson  ?  He  was,  indeed,  the  Jean 
Paul  of  New  England.  New  England  coun- 
try life,  the  farm,  the  murmuring  pines,  the 
gentle  river,  the  cattle  lowing  upon  the  hills, 
the  quiet  study,  the  neighborly  talk  in  the  vil- 
lage store  or  on  the  common,  —  this  was  the 
world  in  which  he  felt  at  home,  in  which  he 
discovered  his  own  personality.  Here  he  for- 
tified himself  against  the  foolish  fashions  and 
silly  prejudices  of  so-called  society;  here  he 
imbibed  his  lifelong  hatred  of  vulgar  ambi- 
tion; here  there  came  to  him  that  insight  into 
the  value  of  the  unpretentious  which  he  has 
expressed  so  well,  "  I  ask  not  for  the  great, 
the  remote,  the  romantic  ;  I  embrace  the  com- 
mon; I  explore  and  sit  at  the  feet  of  the  fa- 
miliar, the  low ; "  here  he  acquired  that  deep- 
seated  and  thoroughly  German  conviction  of 
the  dignity  of  scholastic  seclusion  and  sim- 
plicity, which  has  made  his  whole  life  a  prac- 
tical application  of  his  own  precept :  — 

He  (the  student)  must  embrace  solitude  as  a  bride.  He 
must  have  his  glees  and  his  glooms  alone.  His  own  estimate 
must  be  measure  enough,  his  own  praise  reward  enough  for 


102     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

him.  .  .  .  How  mean  to  go  blazing,  a  gaudy  butterfly,  ir. 
fashionable  or  political  salons,  the  fool  of  society,  the  fool  of 
notoriety,  a  topic  for  newspapers,  a  piece  of  the  street,  and 
forfeiting  the  real  prerogative  of  the  russet  coat,  the  privacy, 
and  the  true  and  warm  heart  of  the  citizen ! 

The  natural  counterpart  to  this  high  appre- 
ciation of  seemingly  small  and  insignificant 
things,  —  which  we  found  to  be  characteristic 
both  of  the  German  temper  and  of  Emerson's 
mind, —  is  a  strongly  developed  sense  for  the 
spiritual  unity  of  all  things,  a  strongly  devel- 
oped consciousness  of  the  supremacy  of  the 
infinite  whole  of  which  all  individual  beings 
are  only  parts,  a  divining  perception  of  the 
spirituality,  or  collective  personality,  of  the 
universe ;  and  here  again  is  seen  a  point  of  con- 
tact between  Emerson  and  Germany.  How 
deeply  German  mysticism  of  the  Middle  Ages 
had  drawn  from  this  well  of  the  Infinite,  how 
strongly  it  had  imbued  even  the  popular  mind 
with  the  idea  of  self-surrender  and  absorption 
in  the  divine  spirit,  may  be  illustrated  by  an 
anecdote  of  the  fourteenth  century  attached 
to  the  name  of  the  great  preacher  and  mystic 
thinker,  John  Tauler.  It  is  said  that  at  the 
time  when  Tauler  was  at  the  height  of  his 
fame  and  popularity  in  Strassburg,  one  day  a 


EMERSON  AND   THE   GERMANS    103 

simple  layman  came  to  him  and  frankly  told 
him  that  in  spite  of  all  his  sacred  learning  and 
his  fine  sermons  he  was  further  removed  from 
the  knowledge  of  God  than  many  an  unlet- 
tered man  of  the  people.  Upon  the  advice  of 
the  layman, — so  the  story  runs,  —  Tauler  now 
withdrew  from  the  world,  gave  away  his  books, 
refrained  from  preaching,  and  devoted  himself 
in  solitude  to  prayerful  contemplation.  Not 
until  two  years  later  did  he  dare  to  ascend  the 
pulpit  again,  but  when  he  attempted  to  speak, 
his  words  failed  him  ;  under  the  scorn  and 
derision  of  the  congregation  he  was  forced  to 
leave  the  church,  and  was  now  considered  by 
everybody  a  perverted  fool.  But  in  this  very 
crisis  he  discovered  the  Infinite  within  him- 
self, the  very  contempt  of  the  world  filled  him 
with  the  assurance  of  his  nearness  to  God,  the 
spirit  came  over  him,  his  tongue  Toosened  as 
of  its  own  accord,  and  he  suddenly  found  him- 
self possessed  by  a  power  of  speech  that  stirred 
and  swayed  the  whole  city  as  no  preacher  ever 
had  done  before. 

This  story  of  the  fourteenth  century  x  may  be 
called  a  symbolic  and  instinctive  anticipation 

1  I  am  not  unaware  of  the  fact  that  Denifle  has  proved 
its  unhistoric  character. 


io4     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

of  the  well-defined  philosophic  belief  in  the 
spiritual  oneness  of  the  universe,  which  was 
held  by  all  the  great  German  thinkers  and 
poets  of  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  and  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Goethe, 
Schiller,  Novalis,  Tieck,  Jean  Paul,  Kant, 
Fichte,  Schelling,  Hegel,  however  much  they 
difFered  in  temper  and  specific  aims,  all  agreed 
in  this,  that  the  whole  visible  manifold  world 
was  to  them  the  expression  of  the  same  infi- 
nite personality,  the  multiform  embodiment 
of  one  universal  mind  ;  they  all  saw  the  crown- 
ing glory  and  divinity  of  man  in  his  capacity 
to  feel  this  unity  of  the  world,  to  hear  the 
voice  of  the  world-spirit  within  him,  to  be  as- 
sured of  its  eternity  in  spite  of  the  constant 
change  and  decay  of  visible  forms. 

Again,  there  is  no  need  of  commenting  upon 
the  close  affinity  of  all  this  with  Emerson's 
views  of  spiritual  personality.  But,  by  way 
of  illustration,  it  may  be  fitting  to  place  side 
by  side  with  each  other  two  utterances,  one  by 
Emerson,  the  other  by  Novalis,  upon  the  es- 
sential unity  underlying  all  life,  —  utterances 
which,  but  for  the  difference  of  style  and  ar- 
tistic quality,  might  have  come  from  the  same 
man.    This  is  Novalis  :  — 


EMERSON   AND  THE   GERMANS     105 

Nature  has  all  the  changes  of  an  infinite  soul,  and  sur- 
prises us  through  her  ingenious  turns  and  fancies,  movements 
and  fluctuations,  great  ideas  and  oddities,  more  than  the 
most  intellectual  and  gifted  man.  She  knows  how  to  vivify 
and  beautify  everything,  and,  though  there  seems  to  reign 
in  individual  things  an  unconscious,  meaningless  mechanism, 
the  eye  that  sees  deeper  recognizes  nevertheless  a  wondrous 
sympathy  with  the  human  heart.  .  .  .  Does  not  the  rock 
become  an  individual  ««  Thou  "  in  the  very  moment  that  I 
address  it  ?  And  in  what  way  do  I  differ  from  the  brook 
when  I  look  down  into  its  waves  with  tender  sadness  and 
lose  my  thoughts  in  its  movement  as  it  glides  on  ? 

And  here  is  Emerson's  somewhat  dilettan- 
teish,  but  after  all  unerring,  speculation  :  — ■ 

The  granite  is  differenced  in  its  laws  only  by  the 
more  or  less  of  heat  from  the  river  that  wears  it  away.  The 
river,  as  it  flows,  resembles  the  air  that  flows  over  it  ;  the 
air  resembles  the  light  which  traverses  it  with  more  subtile 
currents  ;  the  light  resembles  the  heat  which  rides  with  it 
through  space.  Each  creature  is  only  a  modification  of  the 
other  ;  the  likeness  in  them  is  more  than  the  difference,  and 
their  radical  law  is  one  and  the  same.  So  intimate  is  this 
unity  that,  it  is  easily  seen,  it  lies  under  the  undermost 
garment  of  nature  and  betrays  its  source  in  Universal 
Spirit.  ...  It  is  the  one  central  fire,  which,  flaming 
now  out  of  the  lips  of  Etna,  lightens  the  capes  of  Sicily, 
and  now  out  of  the  throat  of  Vesuvius,  illuminates  the 
towers  and  vineyards  of  Naples.  It  is  one  light  which 
beams  out  of  a  thousand  stars.  It  is  one  soul  which  ani- 
mates all  men. 


106     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

As  the  fourth,  and  last,  evidence  of  tem- 
peramental affinity  between  German  character 
and  Emerson,  —  an  affinity  resting,  I  repeat, 
upon  the  common  basis  of  insistence  on  per- 
sonality,—  I  mention  courage  of  personal 
conviction  and  disdain  of  intellectual  compro- 
mises. I  mention  this  point  last,  because  it 
seems  to  me  the  most  important  of  all.  It 
cannot  be  denied  that  in  a  country  where 
every  one  is  constantly  affected,  in  one  way 
or  another,  by  that  which  the  masses  think, 
desire,  or  dislike,  there  is  no  greater  danger 
for  the  individual  than  the  lack  of  intellectual 
differentiation.  Democracy  is  by  no  means 
the  only,  or  necessarily  the  best,  safeguard  for 
intellectual  independence.  On  the  contrary, 
it  may  foster  the  desire  in  the  individual  to 
adapt  himself  to  a  generally  accepted  standard 
of  opinion,  to  avoid  frictions,  to  smooth  down 
the  sharp  corners  of  personal  conviction,  to 
shun  principles,  to  embrace  opportunism.  I 
cannot  rid  myself  of  the  impression  that 
American  university  and  college  life  shows 
the  effect  of  this  natural  tendencv.  There  is 
a  decided  monotony  of  type,  a  prevalence  of 
mediocrity  about  it.  There  are  few  college 
professors  who  are  more   than   good  college 


EMERSON  AND   THE   GERMANS    107 

professors,  few  that  stand  for  some  great  prin- 
ciple, few  fighters,  few  leaders  of  public  opin- 
ion, few  of  whom  it  might  be  said  that  they 
represent  the  national  conscience.  It  is  differ- 
ent in  Germany.  The  German  likes  contrasts ; 
he  likes  friction ;  he  likes  intellectual  contro- 
versy;  he  identifies  himself  with  the  cause 
which  he  represents,  and  since  he  loses  him- 
self in  his  cause,  he  does  not  hesitate  to  use 
plain  speech,  even  at  the  risk  of  being  too 
plain  for  some  ears.  I  do  not  close  my  eyes 
to  the  defects  which  are  the  concomitant  trait 
of  this  national  characteristic.  It  has  undoubt- 
edly led  in  German  political  life  to  so  bewil- 
dering a  variety  of  inimical  factions  and  party 
platforms  as  to  make  parliamentary  govern- 
ment well-nigh  impossible  ;  it  gives  to  German 
scientific  controversy  often  a  tone  of  personal 
bitterness  and  acrimoniousness  which  to  out- 
siders cannot  but  be  repulsive  or  amusing. 
And  yet,  it  is  true  that  here  are  the  very  roots 
of  German  greatness.  It  is  intellectual  courage 
which  has  made  Germany,  in  spite  of  state 
omnipotence  and  clerical  supremacy,  the  home 
of  free  thought ;  it  is  the  disdain  of  compro- 
mises which  lends  to  life  in  Germany,  with 
all  its  drawbacks,  its  oddities,  its  quarrelsome- 


108     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

ness,  its  lack  of  urbanity,  such  an  intense  and 
absorbing  interest;  it  is  the  insistence  upon 
principle  which  makes  the  German  univer- 
sities the  chosen  guardians  of  national  ideals, 
which  draws  into  their  service  the  freest,  most 
progressive,  and  boldest  minds  of  the  country, 
which  endows  them  with  the  best  of  republi- 
canism. 

Emerson  was  not  a  university  man  in  the 
German  sense.  But  of  all  American  writers  of 
the  century,  none  has  expressed  or  lived  out 
this  fundamental  tenet  of  German  university 
life  as  completely  as  he.  Indeed  his  whole  life- 
work  was  one  continuous  defiance  of  the  stand- 
ards of  the  multitude,  whether  fashionable  or 
otherwise.  In  his  resignation  from  the  pastor- 
ate, in  his  resistance  against  official  obligations 
which  would  have  hemmed  in  his  free  activity, 
in  his  advocacy  of  manual  training  for  children, 
of  the  elective  system  in  college  studies,  in 
his  championship  of  the  workman  against  the 
encroachments  of  industrialism,  in  his  speeches 
against  Daniel  Webster  and  the  Fugitive  Slave 
Law,  —  everywhere  the  same  free,  undaunted, 
self-reliant  personality,  "  a  reformer"  (to  quote 
his  own  description  of  the  ideal  American), — 
"  a  reformer  not  content  to  slip  along  through 


EMERSON  AND   THE  GERMANS    109 

the  world  like  a  footman  or  a  spy,  escaping  by 
his  nimbleness  and  apologies  as  many  knocks 
as  he  can,  but  a  brave  and  upright  man,  who 
must  find  or  cut  a  straight  road  to  everything 
excellent  in  the  earth,  and  not  only  go  hon- 
orably himself,  but  make  it  easier  for  all  who 
follow  him  to  go  in  honor  and  with  benefit." 
And  so  it  has  come  to  pass  that  he  uncon- 
sciously characterized  himself  and  his  mission 
for  the  American  people  in  that  noble  passage 
of  the  Lecture  on  the  "Times  :  — 

Now  and  then  comes  a  bolder  spirit,  I  should  rather 
say,  a  more  surrendered  soul,  more  informed  and  led  by- 
God,  which  is  much  in  advance  of  the  rest,  quite  beyond 
their  sympathy,  but  predicts  what  shall  soon  be  the  general 
fullness  ;  as  when  we  stand  by  the  seashore,  whilst  the  tide 
is  coming  in,  a  wave  comes  up  the  beach  far  higher  than  any 
foregoing  one,  and  recedes  ;  and  for  a  long  while  none  comes 
up  to  that  mark ;  but  after  some  time  the  whole  sea  is  there 
and  beyond  it. 

II 

Thus  far  we  have  been  considering  certain 
traits  of  character  which  reveal  an  inner  affinity 
between  Emerson  and  the  German  mind.  But 
—  as  is  well  known  —  there  is  a  more  imme- 
diate and  direct  connection  between  the  two. 
Emerson  bears  such  a  relation  to  the  great 


no     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

German  idealists  of  the  eighteenth  century  as 
the  Apostles  were  thought  by  the  Church  to 
have  to  the  Prophets.  He  is  inspired  by  their 
thought,  transmitted  to  him  for  the  most  part 
by  Coleridge  and  Carlyle ;  he  adds  little  to  it 
that  is  original  or  new,  but  he  applies  it  to  the 
needs  of  his  time  and  his  people  ;  and  since 
he  speaks  to  a  free  people,  a  people  entering 
with  youthful  energy  upon  a  career  of  bound- 
less activity,  he  gives  to  this  thought  an  even 
greater  vitality,  a  more  intensely  human  vigor 
than  it  had  in  the  hands  of  his  masters. 

What  were  the  main  features  of  the  new 
humanism  held  up  to  the  world  by  the  great 
Germans  of  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  and  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  by  Kant, 
Schelling,  and  Fichte,  by  Goethe,  Schiller,  and 
Novalis  ?  In  the  first  place,  an  absolute  free- 
dom from  traditional  authority.  Probably 
never  in  the  history  of  mankind  has  there  been 
a  period  when  men  looked  at  things  from  as 
broad  a  point  of  view  and  with  so  little  bias. 
Humanity  in  the  largest  sense  was  the  chosen 
study  of  the  age.  Everywhere,  —  in  language, 
in  literature,  in  political  institutions,  in  religion, 
—  men  tried  to  detect  the  human  element 
and  brought  it  to  light  with  all  the  fearlessness 


EMERSON  AND  THE  GERMANS    in 

of  scientific  ardor.  With  this  boldness  of 
research  there  was  allied,  secondly,  a  supreme 
interest  in  the  inner  life.  Man  was  considered 
bound  up,  to  be  sure,  with  the  world  of  the 
senses,  and  confined  to  it  as  the  scene  of  his 
activity,  yet  essentially  a  spiritual  being,  deter- 
mining the  material  world  rather  than  deter- 
mined by  it,  responsible  for  his  actions  to  the 
unerring  tribunal  of  his  own  moral  conscious- 
ness. In  the  sea  of  criticism  and  doubt  which 
had  swept  away  traditional  conceptions  and 
beliefs,  this  inner  consciousness  appeared  as 
the  one  firm  rock.  Here,  so  it  seemed,  were 
the  true  foundations  for  a  new  religious  belief, 
a  belief  which  maintains  that  it  is  absolutely 
impossible  to  serve  God  otherwise  than  by 
fulfilling  one's  duties  to  men,  a  belief  which 
considers  the  divine  rather  as  the  final  goal 
than  as  the  preexisting  cause  of  life.  And  lastly, 
there  was  a  joyous  optimism  in  the  men  of 
this  age  which  could  not  help  raising  them 
into  a  higher  sphere.  They  believed  in  the 
future.  They  believed  in  eternity.  They 
believed  that  humanity  was  slowly  advancing 
toward  perfection,  that  a  time  must  come  when 
the  thoughts  of  the  few  wise  men,  the  dreams 
of  the  few  poets  and  prophets  would  become 


ii2     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

transfused  into  the  life-blood  of  the  masses, 
when  the  good  would  be  done  because  it  is 
the  good,  when  instinct  and  duty  would  be 
reconciled ;  and  they  derived  their  highest 
inspirations  from  the  feeling  that  they  them- 
selves were  workers  in  the  service  of  this 
cause.1 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  here  are  found  side  by 
side  all  the  essential  elements  of  Emerson's 
spiritual  world,  —  his  freedom  from  tradition, 
his  deep  interest  in  man,  his  belief  in  moral 
freedom  and  in  the  moral  order  of  the  uni- 
verse, his  pantheism,  his  optimism,  his  confid- 
ing trust  in  the  perfectibility  of  the  race.  But 
it  is  worth  noticing  that  in  the  application  of 
these  principles  there  is,  —  as  I  intimated  be- 
fore,—  a  decided  difference  between  Emerson 
and  his  masters.  The  great  German  idealists, 
while  embracing  the  human  race  in  their 
thought,  while  glorying  in  the  idea  of  a  strong 
and  free  popular  life,  addressed  themselves  in 
reality  to  a  small  circle  of  elect  spirits ;  these 
they  hoped  to  influence  ;  to  them  they  adapted 
their  manner  of  presentation  ;  with  the  people 

1  In  the  above  passage,  I  have  taken  the  liberty  of  quot- 
ing words  used  by  myself  in  my  Social  Forces  in  German 
Literature. 


EMERSON  AND  THE   GERMANS    113 

at  large  they  had  little  to  do.  They  were,  in 
other  words,  with  all  their  democratic  sym- 
pathies, at  heart  thoroughly  aristocratic.  The 
result  is  that  German  literature  of  that  period, 
both  poetry  and  prose,  bears  for  the  most  part, 
the  stamp  of  a  certain  over-refinement,  of 
studied  culture ;  that  it  often  lacks  simplicity 
and  the  strong,  direct  appeal  to  the  popular 
heart. 

It  must  further  be  borne  in  mind  that  the 
condition  of  the  German  people  at  that  time 
was  one  of  utter  political  disintegration,  that 
the  very  foundations  of  national  existence  were 
crumbling  away,  one  after  another,  before  the 
onslaught  of  foreign  invasion,  and  that  the 
task  of  the  future  was  nothing  less  than  a  com- 
plete reorganization  of  public  life.  Whatever 
there  is,  then,  in  German  literature  of  that 
time  of  popular  appeal  is  dictated  by  distress, 
by  the  bitter  need  of  the  hour,  and  has  to  do 
with  the  death  agony  of  a  social  order  sinking 
into  ruins,  and  the  birth  throes  of  a  new  order 
not  yet  fully  formed. 

Emerson,  on  the  other  hand,  although  his 
life  was  spent  amid  the  most  refined  circles  of 
New  England  culture,  although  his  own  utter- 
ances never  fail  to  appeal  to  the  finest  and 


ii4     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

most  elevated  aspirations  of  the  human  heart, 
yet  always  looked  beyond  his  own  cultivated 
surroundings  into  the  wider  spheres  of  com- 
mon, ordinary  life.  With  all  his  aristocratic 
bearing  and  predilections,  he  was  at  heart 
thoroughly  democratic.  And  the  people  to 
which  he  gave  his  life's  work  was  not  a  nation 
threatened  in  its  existence,  crippled,  defeated, 
but  a  nation  that  only  recently  had  won  its 
freedom,  a  healthy  young  giant,  teeming  with 
untried  power  and  latent  vitality,  inexperienced 
but  perfectly  normal,  untouched  by  disap- 
pointment, a  vast  future  in  his  loins.  Is  it  a 
wonder  that  Emerson's  application  of  German 
idealism  should,  on  the  whole,  have  been  more 
sane,  more  normal,  more  vigorous,  more  gen- 
uinely popular,  more  universally  human  than 
German  idealism  itself? 

Let  me  illustrate  this  side  of  Emerson's  re- 
lation to  Germany  by  a  brief  parallel  between 
Emerson  and  that  German  thinker  to  whom 
he  bears  the  most  striking  resemblance,  al- 
though he  was  acquainted  with  his  thought 
only  through  the  medium  of  Carlyle's  writ- 
ings, Johann  Gottlieb  Fichte.  There  is  no 
greater  or  more  inspiring  figure  in  intellectual 
history  than  Fichte's.    In  originality  and  con- 


EMERSON  AND  THE   GERMANS     115 

structiveness  of  thought,  he  so  far  surpasses 
Emerson  that  the  two  can  hardly  be  mentioned 
together.  It  is  as  men,  as  writers,  as  citizens, 
that  they  should  be  compared. 

Fichte's  historic  task  was  this :  to  con- 
centrate the  German  mind,  dissipated  by  over- 
indulgence in  aesthetic  culture,  upon  the  one 
topic  of  national  reorganization.  He  felt 
clearly  that  Germany's  future  could  be  saved 
only  through  an  entire  change  of  heart.  What 
had  brought  on  the  national  catastrophe,  what 
had  made  the  ancient  glory  of  Germany  go 
down  before  the  triumphant  standard  of  Na- 
poleon, was,  to  his  mind,  the  unchecked  rule 
of  egotism ;  what  was  to  insure  national  sal- 
vation, was,  according  to  him,  unconditional 
self-surrender.    As  he  himself  says,  — 

The  rational  life  consists  in  this,  that  the  individual 
should  forget  himself  in  the  species,  sacrificing  his  existence 
to  the  existence  of  the  whole  ;  while  the  irrational  life  con- 
sists in  this,  that  the  individual  should  not  consider  or  love 
anything  but  himself  and  should  devote  his  whole  exist- 
ence to  his  own  well-being.  And  if  the  rational  is  the  good 
and  the  irrational  the  bad,  then  there  is  only  one  virtue,  to 
forget  one's  self;  and  only  one  vice,  to  think  of  one's  self. 

This,  then,  was  the  appeal  which  Fichte  made 
to  his  over-cultivated,  over-individualized,  and 


n6     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

thereby  disorganized  nation.  Whatever  pro- 
gress mankind  thus  far  has  made,  —  for  there 
is  progress  even  in  decay,  —  whatever  bless- 
ings of  civilization  we  possess,  it  has  been  made 
possible  only  through  the  privations,  the  suf- 
ferings, the  self-sacrifice  of  men  who,  before 
our  time,  lived  and  died  for  the  life  of  the 
race.  Let  us  emulate  these  men.  Let  every 
one  of  us  be  a  public  character.  Let  our  phi- 
losophers and  poets  be  aware  that  it  is  not 
they  but  the  universal  spirit  in  them  which 
speaks  through  their  thought  or  their  song, 
that  it  would  be  a  sin  against  the  spirit  to  de- 
grade their  talents  to  the  bondage  of  personal 
ambition  and  vanity.  Let  our  political  life  be 
free  from  despotism  and  monopoly  ;  let  our 
social  institutions  be  regulated  on  the  basis  of 
a  common  obligation  of  each  to  all.  Let  the 
working  classes  be  made  to  feel  "  that  they 
serve,  not  the  caprice  of  an  individual,  but  the 
good  of  the  whole,  and  this  only  so  far  as  the 
whole  is  in  need  of  them."  Let  the  rich  live 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  be  able  to  say,  "  Not  a 
farthing  of  our  profits  is  spent  without  a  bene- 
fit to  higher  culture ;  our  gain  is  the  gain  of 
the  community."  Let  the  ideal  of  a  perfect 
society  be  the  guiding  motive  of  the  age  :  — 


EMERSON  AND  THE  GERMANS     117 

Nothing  can  live  by  itself  and  for  itself;  everything 
lives  in  the  whole,  and  the  whole  continually  sacrifices  it- 
self to  itself  in  order  to  live  anew.  This  is  the  law  of  life. 
Whatever  has  come  to  the  consciousness  of  existence  must 
fall  a  victim  to  the  progress  of  all  existence.  Only  there  is 
a  difference  whether  you  are  dragged  to  the  shambles  like  a 
beast  with  bandaged  eyes  or  whether,  in  full  and  joyous 
presentiment  of  the  life  which  will  spring  forth  from  your 
sacrifice,  you  offer  yourself  freely  on  the  altar  of  eternity. 

In  times  of  distress,  in  any  great  national 
crisis,  this  splendid  appeal  of  Fichte's  for  self- 
surrender  of  the  individual  will  prove  its  in- 
spiring force,  will  ever  anew  demonstrate  its 
imperishable  worth.  But  it  can  hardly  be 
denied  that  it  bears  the  earmarks  of  the  ex- 
traordinary and  exceptional  times  which  forced 
it  from  Fichte's  mind.  Its  Spartan  rigor,  the 
demand  of  state  omnipotence  implied  in  it, 
and  actually  drawn  as  its  consequence  by 
Fichte  himself,  its  tendency  toward  uniformity 
in  education,  its  stoic  contempt  for  the  instinc- 
tive, do  not  make  it  a  safe  rule  for  all  times 
and  all  nations,  and  therefore  detract  from  its 
universally  human  value. 

Emerson's  historic  task  was  this :  to  expand 
the  consciousness  of  the  American  people, 
preoccupied  with  material  prosperity,  to  a  full 
realization  of  its  spiritual  mission.    He  did  not 


n8     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

lack  penetration  into  the  evils  of  the  time  and 
of  the  society  surrounding  him,  nor  did  he 
spare  the  scourge  of  sarcasm  and  moral  indig- 
nation in  chastising  these  evils.  What  more 
drastic  summing  up  of  the  degrading  and  be- 
littling influence  of  wealth  has  ever  been  given 
than  in  his  contrasting  of  father  and  son  —  the 
father  a  self-made  man,  the  son  a  creature  of 
circumstance :  — 

Instead  of  the  masterly  good  humor  and  sense  of  power 
and  fertility  of  resource  in  himself;  instead  of  those  strong 
and  learned  hands,  those  piercing  and  learned  eyes,  that 
supple  body,  and  that  mighty  and  prevailing  heart  which 
the  father  had,  whom  nature  loved  and  feared,  whom  snow 
and  rain,  water  and  land,  beast  and  fish,  seemed  all  to  know 
and  to  serve,  —  we  have  now  a  puny,  protected  person, 
guarded  by  walls  and  curtains,  stoves  and  down  beds, 
coaches  and  men-servants  and  women-servants  from  the 
earth  and  the  sky,  and  who,  bred  to  depend  on  all  these, 
is  made  anxious  by  all  that  endangers  those  possessions,  and 
is  forced  to  spend  so  much  time  in  guarding  them,  that  he 
has  quite  lost  sight  of  their  original  use,  namely,  to  help 
him  to  his  ends,  to  the  prosecution  of  his  love,  to  the  help- 
ing of  his  friend,  to  the  worship  of  his  God,  to  the  enlarge- 
ment of  his  knowledge,  to  the  serving  of  his  country,  to  the 
indulgence  of  his  sentiment  ;  and  he  is  now  what  is  called 
a  rich  man,  —  the  menial  and  runner  of  his  riches. 

And  there  are  whole  philippics  against  pluto- 
cracy contained  in  such  sentences  as,  "  The 


EMERSON  AND  THE  GERMANS     119 

whole  interest  of  history  lies  in  the  fortunes  of 
the  poor,"  or  in  the  lines, — 

'Tis  the  day  of  the  chattel, 
Web  to  weave  and  corn  to  grind  ; 
Things  are  in  the  saddle, 
And  ride  mankind. 

But  Emerson  did  not  find  himself,  as  Fichte 
did,  in  the  midst  of  a  national  breakdown. 
The  social  evils  against  which  he  directed  his 
criticism  and  invective  were  concomitant  phe- 
nomena of  a  national  development  at  bottom 
sound  and  full  of  promise.  His  message, 
therefore,  while  fully  accepting  Fichte's  appeal 
for  self-surrender  of  private  interests  to  public 
purposes,  culminated  not  in  the  demand  of 
concentration,  but  in  the  demand  of  expansion 
of  the  individual.  To  him  as  to  Fichte  the 
common  welfare  was  the  highest  goal ;  to  him 
as  to  Fichte  every  individual  —  the  farmer,  the 
mechanic,  the  business  man,  the  scholar,  the 
artist  —  was,  above  all,  a  public  servant.  But 
this  service  consisted  to  him  primarily  in  the 
fullest  development  of  all  higher  instincts, 
in  keeping  (as  he  expressed  it)  one's  source 
higher  than  one's  tap,  and  in  the  freest  pos- 
sible blending  together  of  individual  activities. 
Nothing  was  further  removed  from  his  ideals 
than    patriarchalism    or    state    omnipotence ; 


iio     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

never  would  he  have  been  willing  to  entrust 
the  training  of  the  rising  generation  to  the 
exclusive  control  of  the  state,  never  would  he 
have  submitted  to  the  limitations  of  a  socialis- 
tic community.  To  the  last  he  adhered  to  the 
principle  formulated  in  the  best  years  of  his 
manhood,  "A  personal  ascendency,  —  that  is 
the  only  fact  much  worth  considering ;  "  to 
the  last  he  saw  the  hope  of  the  future  in  keep- 
ing this  spirit  alive  :  — 

In  the  brain  of  a  fanatic  ;  in  the  wild  hope  of  a  moun- 
tain boy,  called  by  city  boys  very  ignorant,  because  they 
do  not  know  what  his  hope  has  certainly  apprised  him  shall 
be  ;  in  the  love  glance  of  a  girl  ;  in  the  hair-splitting  consci- 
entiousness of  some  eccentric  person  who  has  found  some 
new  scruple  to  embarrass  himself  and  his  neighbors  withal, 
is  to  be  found  that  which  shall  constitute  the  times  to  come. 

May  we  not,  without  disparaging  the  splen- 
did services  of  Fichte  and  the  other  German 
idealists,  say  that  here  there  is  a  message  con- 
taining more  of  universal  truth,  more  wisdom 
applicable  to  the  common,  natural,  and  normal 
needs  of  humanity,  than  is  to  be  found  in  their 
noble  and  extraordinary  flights  ? 

Ill 

Emerson  belongs  to  the  world.  But  it 
seems  as  though  at  the  present  moment  there 


EMERSON  AND  THE  GERMANS     121 

was  no  country  which  had  a  greater  claim  upon 
his  services  and  a  more  urgent  need  of  them 
than  Germany.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  the 
great  political  struggles  and  achievements,  the 
remarkable  industrial  and  commercial  devel- 
opment of  the  last  fifty  years  have,  for  the 
moment,  stifled  somewhat  the  German  genius, 
or  at  least  diverted  it  from  its  spiritual  flight. 
Our  age  has  accomplished  gigantic  tasks.  It 
has  brought  about  the  welding  together  of 
some  thirty  mutually  jealous  and  distrustful 
states  and  principalities  into  one  united  na- 
tion; it  has  carried  through  a  war  crowned 
with  unparalleled  victories  and  triumphs;  it 
has  changed  Germany  from  a  prevailingly  ag- 
ricultural country  to  one  of  the  great  manu- 
facturing centres  of  the  globe  ;  it  has  made  her 
one  of  the  foremost  competitors  in  the  policy 
of  expansion  now  dominating  the  world.  All 
this  belongs  to  the  realm  of  fact  rather  than 
to  the  realm  of  the  spirit.  It  has  led  to  an 
over-emphasis  of  the  will;  it  has  blunted  the 
feeling  ;  it  has  crippled  the  moral  sense  ;  it  has 
clogged  speculation  ;  it  has  brutalized  person- 
ality. 

Religious  life  in  modern  Germany  is  almost 
wholly  latent.    I  do  not  doubt  that  it  exists,  not 


122     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

only  among  the  thousands  of  devoted  men  and 
women  who  serve  the  church  of  their  fathers 
in  traditional  manner  and  form,  but,  perhaps, 
even  more  among  the  millions  who  have  turned 
away  with  hatred  and  contempt  from  rituals 
and  creeds  which  to  them  have  become  empty 
phrases.  But  the  fact  remains  that  there  is  no 
form  of  religious  life  in  Germany  which  could 
in  any  way  be  said  to  be  a  true  expression 
of  the  national  conscience.  In  ethical  theories 
the  average  German  of  to-day,  whether  con- 
sciously or  not,  is  a  follower  of  Nietzsche. 
He  believes  in  personality,  but  it  is  not  the 
personality  of  the  great  German  idealists  of  a 
century  ago,  the  personality  which  is  a  part 
of  the  infinite  spirit,  a  visible  manifestation 
of  the  divine,  —  but  the  personality  of  the 
cynic  author  of  Menscbliches-Allzumenschliches, 
a  bundle  of  animal  instincts,  of  the  desire 
for  self-preservation  and  self-gratification,  the 
thirst  for  power,  the  impulse  to  create  and 
to  command.  In  the  sciences,  —  both  mental 
and  physical,  —  the  man  of  facts,  the  special- 
ist, is  the  man  of  the  hour  ;  and  whatever  may 
be  said  in  favor  of  specialization  as  the  only 
sound  basis  of  scientific  research  (there  clearlv 
is  no  other  equally  sound),  the  exclusive  rule 


EMERSON  AND   THE  GERMANS    123 

of  specialization  has  undoubtedly  given  to  our 
whole  scholarly  life  something  spiritless,  nar- 
row, mechanical.  Nobody  has  felt  this  more 
deeply  and  expressed  it  more  clearly  than 
Herman  Grimm,  the  last  great  representative 
of  the  golden  age  of  German  literature  who 
reached  into  our  own  time.    He  says  :  — 

We  have  the  facts  in  our  heads,  we  are  ready  at  any 
time  to  pay  out  in  cash  any  amount  of  knowledge  up  to  the 
limit  of  our  drafts.  But  the  marriage  of  our  thoughts  with 
the  spirit  which  shelters  them  is  a  cool  marriage  of  con- 
vention without  communion  and  without  children.  No- 
where do  we  dare  to  draw  ultimate  consequences.  What 
goes  beyond  the  sphere  of  fact,  of  that  which  can  be  proved 
by  positive  evidence,  is  looked  upon  as  a  dangerous  conjec- 
ture. Only  the  unimpeachable  is  loudly  expressed,  and  that 
opinion  is  passed  by  with  frowning  silence  which  has  no 
other  foundation  than  the  deep  conviction  of  him  who  ut- 
tered it. 

All  the  foregoing,  it  seems  to  me,  must  have 
made  it  apparent  why  Germany  at  the  present 
moment  in  a  peculiar  and  pregnant  sense  is 
ripe  for  Emerson.  Emerson,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  allied  to  the  German  mind  by  a  deep  and 
close  affinity.  He  has  the  German  love  of  in- 
dividuality, the  German  seriousness  of  pur- 
pose and  contempt  of  sham,  the  German  de- 
light in  small  things,  the  German  sense  of  the 


i24     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

infinite,  the  German  intellectual  courage  and 
disdain  of  compromise.  In  addition  to  this,  he 
derived  his  highest  and  best  thought  to  a  large 
extent  from  the  bountiful  store  of  German 
idealism  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  and  he  en- 
riched this  thought  and  gave  it  still  wider  sig- 
nificance by  applying  it  to  the  needs  of  a  free, 
youthful  nation.  Now  the  time  has  come  for 
Germany  to  receive  from  Emerson.  Now  the 
time  has  come  for  Emerson  to  pay  back  to 
Germany  what  he  owes  to  her.  Now  the  time 
has  come  for  him  to  restore  to  Germany  the 
idealism  of  her  own  thinkers  in  a  purified, 
saner,  and  more  truly  human  form. 

This  is  not  mere  speculation.  Emerson's 
career  in  Germany  has  already  begun.  No  less 
a  man  than  Herman  Grimm  first  drew  atten- 
tion to  him  as  one  of  the  truly  great,  as  a  spir- 
itual power,  as  a  helper  and  comforter,  as  a 
deliverer  from  the  cynicism,  pessimism,  and 
fact-worship  of  the  present  day.  He  said  in 
one  of  his  earliest  essays  :  — 

Emerson  is  a  perfect  swimmer  in  the  element  of  modern 
life.  He  does  not  fear  the  tempests  of  the  future,  because 
he  divines  the  calm  which  will  follow  them.  He  does  not 
hate,  contradict,  combat  ;  because  his  understanding  of  men 
and  their  defects  is  too  great,  his  love  for  them  too  strong. 


EMERSON  AND  THE  GERMANS     125 

I  cannot  but  follow  his  steps  with  deep  reverence  and  look 
at  him  with  wonder,  as  he  divides  the  chaos  of  modern  life 
gently  and  without  passion  into  its  several  provinces.  A 
long  acquaintance  has  assured  me  of  him  ;  and  thinking  of 
this  man  I  feel  that  in  times  of  old  there  really  could  be 
teachers  with  whom  their  disciples  were  ready  to  share  any 
fate,  because  everything  appeared  to  them  doubtful  and  life- 
less without  the  spirit  of  the  man  whom  they  were  follow- 
ing- 

Grimm's  genuine  admiration  did  not  re- 
main without  effect  upon  thinking  men  in  Ger- 
many. Gradually  but  steadily  the  circle  of 
Emerson's  influence  widened.  Julian  Schmidt, 
Friedrich  Spielhagen  were  affected  by  him  ; 
even  Nietzsche  could  not  resist  his  personal- 
ity. From  the  eighties  on,  two  Austrian  writ- 
ers helped  to  increase  his  following  :  Anton  E. 
Schonbach,  to  whom  we  owe  the  first  objec- 
tively critical  account  in  German  of  Emerson's 
work,  and  Karl  Federn,  who  first  published  a 
comprehensive  translation  of  his  essays.  Just 
now  a  second,  and  more  ambitious,  edition  of 
Emerson's  works  in  German  is  being  pub- 
lished in  Leipzig. 

Meanwhile  there  has  been  gathering  strength, 
independently  from  Emerson,  a  movement 
which  is  bound  to  draw  still  wider  circles  of 
German   intellectual  life   toward   Emerson,  a 


126     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

reaction  against  the  pessimism  of  Scl  open- 
hauer,  the  cynicism  of  Nietzsche,  the  soulless 
monotony  of  scientific  specialization.  Her- 
man Grimm's  own  life-work,  his  incessant  in- 
sistence on  artistic  culture,  on  a  free,  noble, 
reverent  personality,  was  perhaps  the  initial 
force  in  this  spiritual  reawakening.  But  other 
and  younger  men  have  followed  in  his  steps. 
The  signs  of  the  time  are  full  of  promise. 
The  extraordinary  success  of  such  a  book  as 
Harnack's  Essence  of  Christianity  ;  the  wide- 
spread influence  of  such  a  university  teacher, 
such  a  wise,  free,  kindly  man  of  ideals  as 
Friedrich  Paulsen  ;  the  devoted  efforts  of  Ru- 
dolf Eucken,  Eugen  Kiihnemann,  Friedrich 
Naumann,  Bruno  Wille,  Wilhelm  Bolsche,  and 
others,  to  win  the  masses  back  to  spiritual 
hope  and  an  enlightened  faith;  the  new  life 
kindled  in  poetry,  the  novel,  and  the  drama, — 
all  this  is  conclusive  evidence  that  we  are  on 
the  very  verge  of  a  new  era  of  German  ideal- 
ism. And  if  it  comes,  there  will  come  with  it 
the  demand  :  less  Nietzsche  and  more  Emer- 
son ;  and  a  new  intellectual  bond  between 
America  and  Germany  will  have  been  estab- 
lished. 


Ill 

THE    EVOLUTIONARY   TREND 

OF    GERMAN    LITERARY 

CRITICISM 


THE    EVOLUTIONARY   TREND 

OF    GERMAN    LITERARY 

CRITICISM 

In  following  out  the  influence  exerted  upon 
German  literary  criticism  by  the  doctrine 
of  evolution,  one  is  confronted  at  the  out- 
set by  the  fact  that  the  roots  of  the  Dar- 
winian theory  are  to  be  found  on  German 
soil.  Long  before  the  theory  of  a  continuous 
and  uninterrupted  development  of  the  physi- 
cal world  had  been  scientifically  formulated, 
German  poets  and  historians  had  accustomed 
themselves  to  conceive  of  the  moral  world  as 
an  organic  whole  living  itself  out  according  to 
its  own  immanent  laws.  Long  before  the  strug- 
gle for  bodily  existence  had  been  discovered 
as  the  prime  cause  of  differentiation  of  racial 
types,  the  realization  of  the  Idea  through  evo- 
lution from  mere  identity  with  itself  to  the 
most  highly  organized  intellectual  life  had  be- 
come a  household  word  in  German  philosophy. 
It  is  clearly  impossible,  then,  to  trace  Darwin- 
ian ideas  in  German  literary  criticism  without 


130     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

discovering  that  to  a  large  extent  these  ideas 
are  at  bottom  pre-Darwinian. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
the  great  ascendency  of  the  natural  sciences, 
which  set  in  with  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  exerted  a  profound  influence  upon  the 
mental  sciences  also.  The  idea  of  intellectual 
development,  which  thus  far  had  borne  a  meta- 
physical appearance,  now  assumed  scientific 
features,  and  literary  criticism,  no  less  than  his- 
tory or  philosophy,  was  affected  by  this  change. 
Before  1850,  literary  criticism  had  been  in  the 
main  speculative  ;  after  1850,  it  became  either 
kulturhistorisch  (there  is  no  English  equiva- 
lent for  this  word),  or  philological,  or  psycho- 
logical,—  terms  which,  every  one  of  them, 
emphasize  the  scientific  aspect  of  evolution. 

Here,  then,  seem  to  be  mapped  out  the 
natural  divisions  of  my  inquiry.  I  shall  first 
speak  of  pre-Darwinian  evolutionary  ideas  in 
German  literary  criticism  from  Herder  to  He- 
gel ;  next,  I  shall  consider  the  critical  views  of 
men,  like  Wilhelm  Riehl  and  Jacob  Burck- 
hardt,  who  looked  upon  literature  primarily 
as  an  index  of  the  advance  or  decay  of  civili- 
zation; thirdly,  I  shall  examine  the  philological 
method  of  research,  now  dominating  the  aca- 


GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM     131 

demic  study  of  literature,  a  method  which  is 
primarily  directed  toward  the  elucidation  of 
literary  origins  ;  and  finally,  I  shall  discuss  the 
psychological  method  just  beginning  to  claim 
its  place  as  an  indispensable  means  for  the 
proper  understanding  of  the  growth  of  poetic 
conceptions  or  impressions. 


Our  review  naturally  opens  with  a  man  who 
not  only  gave  the  first  strong  impulse,  in  Ger- 
many, to  the  historical  study  of  literature,  but 
who  also  anticipated  the  scientific  method  of 
literary  research  by  nearly  one  hundred  years, 
Johann  Gottfried  Herder.  Herder  was  the 
first  German  critic  to  conceive  of  literature  as 
a  natural  growth.  The  principles  which  Winck- 
elmann  had  derived  from  the  study  of  Greek 
art  he  applied  to  the  study  of  literature,  and 
he  surpassed  Winckelmann  in  this,  that  he  did 
not  confine  himself  to  any  one  literature,  be  it 
Greek  or  Roman  or  German,  but  endeavored 
to  understand  all  literature  as  the  necessary 
outcome  of  a  given  national  culture.  Whether 
studying  Esquimaux  funeral  songs  or  Hebrew 
psalms  or  Spanish  ballads,  whether  comparing 
English  and  German  popular  poetry,  whether 


132     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

analyzing  great  master-minds  like  Pindar  or 
Sophocles  or  Shakspere,  Herder  never  loses 
sight  of  the  fact  that  all  poetry  is  the  product 
of  a  particular  soil,  —  natural  surroundings, 
national  character,  and  social  conditions,  —  and 
his  critical  endeavor  mainly  has  in  view  the 
fuller  understanding  of  the  relation  between 
the  literary  soil  and  its  product.  Nearly  a  cen- 
tury before  Taine,  in  his  History  of  English 
Literature,  gave  a  specimen  demonstration  of 
the  influence  of  the  sea  upon  the  intellectual 
make-up  of  a  nation,  the  young  Herder,  in  the 
diary  of  his  voyage  from  Riga  to  Nantes,  de- 
scribed how  this  life  on  shipboard  made  him 
understand  the  Homeric  epics  as  the  poetic 
outgrowth  of  a  seafaring  people.  "It  was  sea- 
farers who  brought  the  Greeks  their  earliest 
religion.  All  Greece  was  a  colony  by  the  sea. 
Consequently,  their  mythology  was  not,  like 
that  of  the  Egyptians  and  Arabs,  a  religion  of 
the  desert,  but  a  religion  of  the  sea  and  the 
forest.  Orpheus,  Homer,  Pindar,  to  be  fully 
understood,  ought  to  be  read  at  sea."  And  it 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  Herder's  ripest 
works,  such  as  the  Ideas  on  the  Philosophy  of 
History,  or  the  Letters  Concerning  the  Advance- 
ment of  Humanity,  are  simply  steeped  with  the 


GERMAN    LITERARY  CRITICISM     133 

conviction  of  the  inseparableness  of  literature 
and  social  life.  The  ideal  of  Greek  beauty  is 
to  him  closely  allied  with  the  free  humanity 
of  Greek  political  institutions;  Roman  litera- 
ture appears  to  him  as  a  concomitant  pheno- 
menon of  Roman  imperialism  ;  in  mediaeval 
epics  and  romances  he  analyzes  the  chivalric 
and  the  clerical  element;  in  the  Elizabethan 
drama  he  detects  the  spirit  that  moved  Drake 
and  Raleigh  ;  and  his  hope  of  a  new  golden 
age  of  modern  literature  is  founded  upon  his 
belief  in  the  progressive  humanization  of  mod- 
ern society. 

While  in  all  this  we  clearly  see  the  begin- 
nings of  an  evolutionary  method  of  studying 
literature,  it  must  be  admitted  that  Herder 
nowhere  passes  the  stage  of  beginnings.  Just 
how  a  certain  national  character  and  certain 
social  conditions  produce  a  certain  type  of 
literature  ;  just  how  within  a  given  national 
culture  certain  literary  stages  correspond  to 
certain  stages  in  the  general  intellectual  and 
moral  development ;  and  above  all  how  the 
literary  conceptions  of  one  people  have  af- 
fected and  transformed  the  literary  conceptions 
of  another  people,  —  these  are  questions  to 
which  Herder  offers  either  no  answer  at  all  or 


134    GERMAN    IDEALS   OF   TO-DAY 

an  answer  couched  in  general  and  somewhat 
dubious  terms.  No  one  would  have  been  bet- 
ter able  to  supplement  Herder  in  this  direc- 
tion than  his  greatest  pupil,  the  author  of  the 
Metamorphosis  of  Plants,  and  Goethe  has  in- 
deed given  us  not  a  few  literary  sketches  which 
demonstrate  that  he  looked  upon  literature  as 
a  phenomenon  essentially  parallel  to  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature,  to  be  studied  with  all  the 
exactness  and  the  attention  to  detail  required 
in  biological  research.  His  Benvenuto  Cellini, 
his  Winckelmann  and  His  Age,  and  above  all 
his  own  autobiography  are  model  achieve- 
ments of  the  evolutionary  method  ;  they  de- 
scribe, with  truly  scientific  comprehensive- 
ness and  precision,  the  growth  of  a  great  in- 
dividual, the  development  of  a  pronounced 
intellectual  type  under  the  modifying  influences 
of  inheritance,  time,  and  environment.  And  his 
essay  on  Mere  Imitation  of  Nature,  Manner, 
and  Style  is,  at  least  in  outline,  an  inductive 
study  of  the  stages  through  which  the  creative 
activity  of  a  great  literary  or  artistic  individ- 
ual seems  necessarily  to  pass,  from  the  mere 
reproduction  of  outward  impressions,  through 
the  inner  amalgamation  of  these  impressions 
with  his  own  individualitv,  to  the  final  selec- 


GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM    135 

tion  of  such  impressions  as  reveal  the  funda- 
mental and  abiding  type  ;  in  other  words,  from 
naturalism  through  subjectivism  to  objective 
mastery. 

It  is  to  be  regretted,  therefore,  that  Goethe 
has  not  pursued  this  subject  still  further;  espe- 
cially, that  he  has  not  formulated  more  fully 
his  views  as  to  the  relation  of  one  literary  age 
to  another,  that  he  has  not  given  us  a  study 
of  the  development  of  the  world's  literature. 
If  he  had,  his  sober,  inductive  observation 
would  have  saved  us  much  of  that  subjective 
speculation,  characteristic  of  the  further  course 
of  evolutionary  literary  criticism  in  Germany, 
which,  however  stimulating  and  suggestive 
especially  Schiller,  the  Schlegels,  and  Hegel 
have  made  this  speculation,  somewhat  detracts 
from  its  scientific  value. 

Schiller,  as  well  as  the  brothers  Schlegel, 
and  even  more  so  Hegel,  derive  their  views 
of  literary  development  from  certain  precon- 
ceived notions  about  the  development  of  cul- 
ture in  general ;  Schiller  from  the  contrast 
between  what  he  calls  the  Naive  and  the  Senti- 
mental, the  Schlegels  from  the  contrast  between 
the  Classic  and  the  Romantic,  Hegel  from  the 
self-realization  of  the  Idea. 


136    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

The  essay  on  Naive  and  Sentimental  Poetry ', 
in  which  Schiller  reviews  the  whole  history 
of  civilization  as  reflected  in  the  history  of 
literature,  clearly  demonstrates  both  the  af- 
finity of  Schiller  's  aesthetic  conceptions  with 
the  moral  views  of  Rousseau  and  his  departure 
from  these  views.  It  is  in  this  departure  that 
we  see  an  evolutionary  tendency.  In  entire 
accord  with  Rousseau,  Schiller  proceeds  from 
the  dream  of  a  primitive  state  of  harmony  be- 
tween the  sensuous  and  the  spiritual  in  man, 
a  state  of  naive,  unconscious  equipoise  between 
the  contrasting  forces  of  our  nature.  In  chil- 
dren, in  animals,  in  plants,  we  have  types  of 
this  inner  harmony  before  our  eyes  even  now  : 
instinct  and  reason  are  here  not  yet  at  variance 
with  each  other.  In  the  history  of  mankind, 
Greek  poetry  and  art  have  been  the  highest 
expressions  of  this  naive,  instinctive,  natural 
oneness  of  man  with  himself.  The  progress 
of  civilization  has  destroyed  this  state  of  natu- 
ral oneness,  it  has  brought  man  into  conflict 
with  himself;  modern  poetry,  therefore,  as  a 
rule  does  not  express  harmony,  but  lost  har- 
mony, longing  for  harmony, —  it  is  not  naive 
but  sentimental.  To  be  sure,  there  have  been 
a  few  great  poets,  even  among  the  moderns, 


GERMAN   LITERARY   CRITICISM     137 

who  seem  to  have  preserved  that  childlike 
oneness  with  self  which  we  find  in  the  Greeks  ; 
but  the  great  mass  of  modern  poetry  is  a  sym- 
bol of  strife,  of  the  strife  between  intellect  and 
sentiment,  duty  and  instinct,  authority  and 
freedom,  and  at  the  same  time  it  is  a  symbol 
of  the  craving  for  the  overcoming  of  this  strife, 
of  the  longing  for  reconciliation,  atonement, 
purification,  peace.  Here,  then,  the  difference 
between  Schiller  and  Rousseau  clearly  asserts 
itself.  To  Rousseau,  the  inharmoniousness,  the 
grating  discords  of  modern  life  are  merely 
symptoms  of  corruption  and  decay.  If  we 
are  to  recover  our  humanity,  we  must  return 
to  the  simplicity  of  primitive  life.  To  Schiller, 
the  very  discords  and  the  very  morbidness 
of  modern  life  are  concomitant  symptoms  of 
a  higher  development.  The  return  to  primi- 
tive simplicity  from  our  complex  civilization 
is  as  impossible  as  the  return  of  the  mature 
man  to  the  days  of  his  childhood.  Not  back 
to  nature,  but  forward  to  a  still  more  com- 
prehensive culture  is  the  watchword,  and  it  is 
the  principal  office  of  literature  and  art  to  lead 
mankind  in  this  upward  movement. 

This,  then,  is  Schiller's  conception  of  literary 
evolution.     It  is  a  theory  clearly  founded  not 


138    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

upon  the  observation  of  facts,  but  upon  a 
subjective  demand  of  Schiller's  own  nature. 
Schiller  felt  in  himself  a  most  intense  desire 
for  spiritual  oneness,  for  a  welding  together 
of  the  instinctive  and  the  conscious  into  a 
higher  unity,  and  he  projected,  as  it  were,  this 
inner  struggle  of  his  own  self  into  the  history 
of  the  race,  making  it  a  law  of  all  spiritual 
development.  As  a  scientific  contribution, 
therefore,  this  theory  of  a  necessary  progress 
from  the  naive  to  the  sentimental  and  thence 
to  a  reconciliation  of  both,  has  its  obvious 
defects  and  limitations.  As  a  suggestive  specu- 
lation, as  a  fermentum  cognitionis,  it  has  been 
of  inestimable  value.  The  discussion  so  eagerly 
carried  on  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  about  the  objective  and  subjective 
elements  of  poetry,  about  the  difference  be- 
tween Volkspoesie  and  Kunstpoesie>  about  the 
natural  sequence  of  the  several  poetic  species 
from  the  naive  stage  represented  by  the  epic, 
through  the  sentimental  phase  characterized 
by  lyrics,  to  the  final  combination  of  both  as 
shown  in  the  drama,  —  this  whole  discussion 
could  hardly  have  taken  the  form  which  it 
took  without  the  influence  of  Schiller's  fun- 
damental thought. 


) 
GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM     139 

I  have  said  that  the  brothers  Schlegel  based 
their  theories  of  literary  growth  upon  the  con- 
trast between  the  Classic  and  the  Romantic. 
This  formula  by  no  means  does  full  justice  to 
the  service  rendered  by  the  Schlegels  to  the 
history  of  literature.  Both  Friedrich  Schlegel 
and  his  brother  August  Wilhelm  have  done 
remarkable  work  in  bringing  out  the  intimate 
connection  between  literature  and  national  cul- 
ture in  general.  Such  studies  as  Friedrich's 
essay,  On  the  Schools  of  Greek  Poetry ',  with  its 
fine  characterization  of  the  Ionic,  Doric,  Attic, 
and  Alexandrian  culture,  or  August  Wilhelm's 
Lectures  on  Dramatic  Literature,  with  their 
subtle  analysis  of  the  artistic  individualities 
and  historic  positions  of  the  great  dramatists 
from  Sophocles  to  Calderon  and  Shakspere, 
are  masterpieces  of  evolutionary  criticism.  Yet 
it  can  hardly  be  said  that  the  underlying  idea 
of  these  and  similar  works  is  original  with  the 
Schlegels ;  it  is  an  Herderian  idea  further  devel- 
oped and  more  carefully  applied.  The  concep- 
tion, however,  of  the  contrast  between  Classic 
and  Romantic  is  their  own;  this  is  their  essen- 
tially new  contribution  to  evolutionary  thought. 
We  are  able  to  follow  out  the  growth  of  this 
conception,  from  its  first  germ  in  Friedrich's 


140    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

essay,  On  the  Study  of  Greek  Poetry  (1795),  to  its 
fullest  form  in  August  Wilhelm's  Berlin  lec- 
tures, On  Belles-Lettres  and  Art  (1803-4). 

In  the  essay  just  mentioned,  Friedrich  Schle- 
gel  reveals  himself  as  a  most  ardent  Classicist. 
The  ancients  are  to  him  exponents  of  what  he 
calls  the  "objective,"  /'.  e.}  the  lawful,  natural, 
typical,  beautiful;  the  moderns  appear  to  him 
as  representatives  of  what  is  merely  "interest- 
ing," i.  e.,  the  capricious,  artificial,  individual, 
accidental.  Even  the  greatest  of  the  moderns, 
even  Dante  and  Shakspere,  offer  us  no  true 
harmony,  no  genuine  beauty.  This  is  Fried- 
rich  Schlegel's  starting-point.  Gradually,  how- 
ever, we  see  him  drift  away  from  this  position 
to  one  exactly  opposite;  that  is  to  say,  while 
he  maintains  the  contrast  of  the  "objective" 
and  the  "interesting,"  he  more  and  more  in- 
clines to  attach  different  values  to  these  terms, 
until  at  last  he  comes  to  see  in  the  objectivity 
of  ancient  art  nothing  but  formal  correctness, 
"the  perfect  letter  of  poetry,"  while  the  par- 
ticular interest  of  modern  or  romantic  art  he 
finds  now  in  this,  that  it  is  a  revelation  of  the 
soul,  that  it  makes  us  divine  "  the  growing 
spirit." 

This  is  the  point  where  his  brother  takes 


GERMAN    LITERARY  CRITICISM     141 

up  the  discussion.  Deeply  imbued,  as  he  was, 
with  the  Schellingian  idea  of  the  inner  unity 
of  all  life,  August  Wilhelm  Schlegel  conceived 
of  the  contrast  between  Classic  and  Roman- 
tic as  a  part  of  the  polarity  of  the  whole 
universe,  the  polarity  between  form  and  spirit, 
the  real  and  the  ideal,  the  finite  and  the  infi- 
nite ;  he  therefore  refrained  from  extolling  one 
of  these  opposing  principles  at  the  expense 
of  the  other,  he  merely  considered  them  as 
different  but  typical  manifestations  of  the  same 
all-embracing  creative  force,  and  he  endeav- 
ored to  trace  the  consequences  of  this  differ- 
entiation of  type  throughout  the  whole  range 
of  art  and  literature. 

It  is  natural  that  from  this  point  of  view 
painting  should  have  appeared  to  him  as  the 
typically  romantic,  sculpture  and  architecture 
as  the  typically  classic  arts.  The  latter  two 
appeal  above  all  to  the  sense  of  form,  they 
are  dominated  by  line  and  external  proportion ; 
ancient  art,  therefore,  finds  in  them  its  high- 
est expression.  The  fuller  development  of  the 
inner  life  in  Christian  history  has  broken  this 
supremacy  of  form;  Christian  sculpture  and 
architecture  have,  therefore,  not  reached  that 
completeness  of  perfection  which  we  admire 


142     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

in  the  Parthenon.  Painting,  on  the  other 
hand,  has  achieved  its  greatest  triumphs  in 
modern  times,  because  painting  is  not  so 
much  concerned  with  harmony  of  outline  as 
with  the  changing  effects  of  light  and  shade, 
with  the  inner  movement,  as  it  were,  of  na- 
ture, and,  therefore,  has  a  closer  affinity  with 
the  human  soul.  In  like  manner  Schlegel  de- 
rives the  difference  between  classic  and  roman- 
tic poetry  from  this  fundamental  polarity  of 
form  and  spirit.  The  metrical  system  of  the 
ancients  is  quantitative,  that  of  the  moderns 
accentuating  and  rhyming.  The  reason  for 
this  difference  is  to  be  found  in  this,  that  a 
line  measured  by  quantity  is  an  isolated  fact, 
complete  in  itself,  appealing  to  our  plastic 
sense,  while  the  rhyme,  by  depriving  the 
single  line  of  its  independence  and  making  it 
a  part  of  a  fluctuating  whole,  appeals  to  our 
feeling  for  inner  movement.  "Classic  verse 
always  holds  us  in  the  present  and  brings  be- 
fore us  images  of  equal  distinctness  and  dig- 
nity; romantic  verse  suggests  both  the  past 
and  the  future,  and  gives  us  a  foreboding 
sense  of  the  infinite."  And  so,  finally,  the 
ultimate  spiritual  aims  of  art  and  literature  are 
found  to  be  differentiated  according  to  these 


GERMAN    LITERARY  CRITICISM     143 

two  principles  of  the  Classic  and  the  Roman- 
tic,—  the  one  proceeds  from  the  real,  lifts 
it  into  the  sphere  of  the  ideal  and  finds  its 
noblest  form  in  man  deified  ;  the  other  pro- 
ceeds from  the  ideal,  sinks  it  into  the  real,  and 
finds  its  supreme  expression  in  God  become 
flesh. 

Undoubtedly  in  these  generalizations  there 
is  a  good  deal  that  is  more  brilliant  than  truth- 
ful, that  is  the  result  of  hasty  deduction  and 
flighty  speculation.  Yet  here  again,  as  in 
Schiller's  case,  we  have  every  reason  to  be 
grateful  for  a  method  which  considers  the 
whole  development  of  human  culture  from 
one  syigle  point  of  view  and  thus  imparts  to 
it  an  organic  unity  and  a  grandeur  of  outline 
that  is  both  illuminating  and  inspiring.  As 
the  first  comprehensive  attempt  to  represent 
the  history  of  the  world's  literature  in  the 
light  of  a  continuous  succession  of  opposed 
yet  related  types,  of  a  gradual  approximation 
toward  a  complete  harmony  between  form  and 
spirit,  August  Wilhelm  Schlegel's  work  will 
retain  its  place  among  the  great  achievements 
of  evolutionary  criticism. 

In  no  aesthetic  theory  has  the  principle  of 
evolution  played  a  more  important  or  more 


i44    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

consistent  part  than  in  that  of  Hegel.  As 
Hegel's  whole  philosophy  is  based  upon  the 
conception  of  a  gradual  self-unfolding  of  the 
Idea,  i.  e.,  a  gradual  transition  from  latent  and 
unconscious  to  fully  apparent  and  fully  con- 
scious spiritual  freedom,  so  his  aesthetic  doc- 
trine also  is  based  upon  the  conception  of  a 
gradual  self-unfolding  of  Beauty,  from  its 
lowest  to  its  highest  manifestations.  As  des- 
ignations for  two  of  the  stages  in  this  process 
of  artistic  evolution,  Hegel  adopts  the  Schle- 
gelian  terms  of  Classic  and  Romantic,  but  he 
gives  these  terms  a  new  meaning,  and  he  adds 
to  them,  or  rather  he  prefixes  to  them,  another, 
—  the  Symbolic.  What  does  Hegel  mean  by 
this  necessary  passage  of  art  through  the  three 
stages  of  the  Symbolic,  the  Classic,  and  the 
Romantic?  Briefly  stated,  and  robbed,  as  far 
as  possible,  of  the  technicalities  of  Hegel's 
language,  it  is  this:  — 

In  the  lowest, or  symbolic,  stage  "the  Idea," 
as  Hegel  says,1  "  has  not  yet  found  the  true 
form  even  within  itself,  and  therefore  continues 
to  be  merely  the  struggle  and  aspiration  there- 
after." There  is  no  congruity,  no  inner  bond 
between  the  thought  to  be  expressed  and  its 

1  I  quote  from  Bosanquet's  translation  of  the  JEstbtttk. 


GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM    145 

expression.  Either  the  expression  is  entirely 
without  form,  shapeless,  as  in  the  case  of  a 
rude  block  standing  for  divinity;  or  it  is  of  an 
exaggerated,  huge,  grotesque  shape,  as  though 
the  Idea,  in  order  to  come  to  itself,  had  to  do 
violence  to  nature, — this  is  the  impression 
produced,  for  instance,  by  Assyrian  architec- 
ture. Although  this  stage  is  to  be  found  in  the 
artistic  development  of  every  race  and  nation, 
—  as,  indeed,  in  that  of  most  individuals, — 
yet  its  typical  representative  is  Oriental  art, 
with  its  "  reciprocal  inadequacy  of  shape  and 
idea,  its  aspiration,  its  disquiet,  its  mystery, 
and  sublimity." 

In  the  second  stage  of  art  there  is  no  such 
contrast  between  form  and  meaning.  The  Idea 
has  found  its  adequate  manifestation  in  the 
human  body  ;  for  the  human  body  is,  among 
finite  things,  the  most  complete  revelation  of 
mind,  it  is  the  spiritual  made  sensuous.  The 
artist,  then,  by  representing  the  human  body  in 
its  typical  outline,  i.  e.y  freed  from  all  the  defi- 
ciencies of  what  is  merely  accidental  and  exter- 
nal, represents,  indeed,  the  Idea  in  a  direct  and 
specific  manner.  This  stage  of  art  is  again, 
more  or  less  clearly,  a  part  of  the  spiritual  de- 
velopment of  all  nations  and  all  individuals  ; 


146    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

it  has,  however,  reached  its  perfection  in  Greek 
sculpture.  But,  perfect  as  Greek  sculpture  is, 
it  proves  very  conclusively  the  limitations  of 
this  second  stage  of  art.  Mind  is  here  "spe- 
cified as  a  particular  case  of  mind,  as  human 
mind,  and  not  as  simply  absolute  and  eter- 
nal." A  new  struggle,  therefore,  to  express  the 
Idea  in  all  its  fullness  becomes  necessary,  and 
thus  there  arises  the  third  stage  of  art,  the  ro- 
mantic. 

"The  romantic  form  of  art  destroys  the 
completed  union  of  the  Idea  and  its  reality, 
and  recurs,  though  in  a  higher  phase,  to  that 
difference  and  antagonism  of  two  aspects  which 
was  left  unvanquished  by  symbolic  art."  In- 
deed it  revives  and  modifies  the  symbolism  of 
that  early  stage.  Complete  harmony  of  form 
and  spirit  becomes  once  more  an  unattainable 
ideal ;  vague,  deep,  unutterable  longings  once 
more  take  the  place  of  precise  and  definite 
characterization  ;  fantastic  caprice  rules  instead 
of  law  and  measure.  But  while  in  the  first 
symbolic  stage  the  Idea  was  as  yet  so  unde- 
veloped that  it  fell  short  of  adequate  expres- 
sion, it  is  now  so  fully  developed  that  it  tran- 
scends all  sensuous  expression  and  seeks  to 
reveal  itself  as  free  and  infinite.    Isolated  sug- 


GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM     147 

gestions,  fragmentary  anticipations  of  this  last 
stage  of  art  development  are  again  to  be  found 
throughout  the  whole  course  of  human  history; 
but  only  in  mediaeval  and  modern  painting, 
music,  and  poetry  has  the  romantic  principle 
become  the  dominating  motive  of  creative 
activity. 

What  a  marvelous  construction  it  is,  this 
Hegelian  evolution  of  Beauty,  this  seeking  of 
the  spirit  after  adequate  self-revelation,  from 
the  first  struggling  with  crude,  material  form 
to  its  final  transcendence  of  all  sensuous  form  ! 
What  light  it  seems  to  shed  upon  the  whole 
course  of  civilization;  how  it  seems  to  unlock 
the  mysteries  of  all  spiritual  existence !  No 
wonder  that  it  swayed  European  thought  with 
sovereign  exclusiveness  for  a  whole  generation, 
that  its  indirect  influence  is  by  no  means 
superseded  yet.  Without  it  we  should  not 
only  not  have  had  such  aesthetic  systems  as  that 
of  Friedrich  Theodor  Vischer,  such  literary 
critics  as  David  Friedrich  Strauss,  such  literary 
philosophers  as  Kuno  Fischer  or  Rudolf 
Haym  ;  but  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  further 
course  of  evolutionary  criticism  in  Germany, 
although  to  a  large  extent  opposed  to  Hegel's 
deductive  method,  would  have  been  as  vigor- 


148    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

ous  and  aggressive  as  it  has  been,  but  for  the 
propelling  force  of  Hegel's  thought.1 


Almost  simultaneously  with  Darwin's  Ori- 
gin of  Species  there  appeared  four  books  which 
form  an  epoch  in  German  literary  history, — 
Hermann  Hettner's  Literaturgeschichte  des 
1 8.  Jahrhunderts  (1855),  Wilhelm  Heinrich 
Riehl's  Kulturstudien  aus  drei  Jahrbunderten 
(1858),  Gustav  Frey tag's  Bilder  aus  der  deut- 
schen  Vergangenheit  (1859),  and  Jacob  Burck- 
hardt's  Kultur  der  Renaissance  in  It  alien  ( 1 860). 
These  four  books  may  be  singled  out  as  indicat- 
ing the  turning  of  the  tide  in  German  evolution- 
ary criticism  from  a  priori  reasoning  to  inductive 
methods,  especially  to  that  inductive  method 
which  studies  literature  and  art  from  the  point 
of  view  of  national  civilization.  That  this 
method  was  at  bottom  an  idea  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  that  it  had  been  proclaimed  in 
Germany  most  vigorously  by  Winckelmann 

1  Even  so  intensely  modern  a  book  as  Edgar  Steiger's 
Das  Werden  des  neuen  Dramas ■  ( I  898),  a  book  which  betrays 
an  affinity  with  the  spirit  of  Ibsen  and  Hauptmann  as  few 
others  do,  rests,  in  its  philosophic  presuppositions,  largely 
on  Hegelian  views. 


GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM     149 

and  Herder,  I  have  stated  before.  Nor  had 
it  been  entirely  discarded  in  the  period  of  pre- 
vailingly philosophic  speculation.  I  need  only 
mention,  as  proof  of  this,  the  names  of  Jacob 
and  Wilhelm  Grimm,  Gervinus,  and  Vilmar. 
But  it  certainly  may  be  said  that  the  full  ap- 
plication of  this  method  sets  in  only  with  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Of  the  four  men  whose  works  I  bracketed 
with  each  other  as  epoch-making  in  German 
literary  history,  Hettner's  was  perhaps  the 
least  original  personality.  His  influence  was 
broad  rather  than  deep ;  in  detail  his  criticism 
is  often  disappointing;  he  lacks  that  delicate 
sense  of  form  which  enables  a  Sainte-Beuve  or 
a  Herman  Grimm  to  reproduce  a  given  work 
of  literature  or  art  before  our  very  eyes.  But 
Hettner  rendered  one  extremely  important  ser- 
vice to  the  study  of  literature ;  he  gave  us  the 
first  inductive  literary  history  which  represents 
on  a  large  scale  and  at  the  same  time  with 
scientific  minuteness  the  development  of  a  cer- 
tain intellectual  type  and  its  variation  accord- 
ing to  different  national  surroundings.  It  may 
truly  be  said  that  the  one  theme  of  his  His- 
tory of  Eighteenth  Century  Literature  is  this : 
to  show  both  the  racial  unity  and  the  national 


150    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

differentiation  of  European  culture  in  the  Age 
of  Enlightenment,  —  or,  to  use  a  simile  which 
Hettner  himself  is  particularly  fond  of  em- 
ploying, European  literature  of  the  last  few 
centuries  appears  in  this  book  as  a  grand  fugue 
in  which  the  voices  of  the  various  nations  make 
themselves  heard  one  after  another,  each  tak- 
ing up  the  leading  motive  in  its  own  way,  each 
blending  with  the  preceding  and  the  following 
voice,  and  thus  helping  to  produce  a  progres- 
sive whole  of  an  extremely  complex  and  varie- 
gated character.  How  England  takes  the  lead 
with  its  empirical  philosophy,  its  constitutional 
freedom,  its  deistic  religion,  its  emotional  and 
satirical  literature;  how  France  adopts  the  tone 
set  by  England,  how  Voltaire  trains  himself  in 
the  school  of  Newton  and  Locke,  how  Mon- 
tesquieu studies  the  English  Constitution,  how 
Rousseau  is  inspired  by  Richardson,  how  at  last 
the  English  spirit,  modified  by  French  temper, 
leads  to  the  downfall  of  the  ancien  regime;  and 
finally,  how  the  whole  movement  reaches  its 
artistic  climax  in  the  classic  productions  of  the 
German  poets  and  composers  of  the  Weimar 
epoch,  —  all  this  is  brought  out  with  a  sound- 
ness of  method,  a  soberness  of  judgment,  and 
wealth    of  illustration   far  removed  from   the 


GERMAN    LITERARY   CRITICISM     151 

fascinatingly  dangerous  generalities  of  Hegel- 
ian reasoning.  The  influence  of  the  scientific 
method  is  here  unmistakable. 

While  Hettner's  principal  subject  is  the 
gradual  rounding  out  and  final  consummation 
of  that  intellectual  type  which  stands  for  the 
most  essential  and  permanent  in  modern  cul- 
ture,—  the  rationalistic,  —  Jacob  Burckhardt 
goes  still  further  back  to  origins.  His  subject 
is  the  evolution  of  the  modern  individualistic 
type  of  man  from  the  collectivism  of  mediaeval 
society;  and  his  particular  aim  is  to  analyze 
the  form  which  this  evolution  took  in  Italy, 
to  show  in  what  sense  "  the  Italian  was  the 
first-born  among  the  sons  of  modern  Europe." 
In  the  Middle  Ages  —  this  is  the  starting- 
point  of  Burckhardt's  investigation  —  the  hu- 
man mind  was  in  a  state  of  dreamy  half-con- 
sciousness. It  looked  at  the  world,  both  the 
inner  and  the  outer,  "through  a  veil  woven 
of  faith,  illusion,  and  childish  prepossession. 
Man  was  conscious  of  himself  only  as  a  mem- 
ber of  a  race,  people,  party,  family,  or  corpo- 
ration,—  only  through  some  general  category. 
In  Italy  this  veil  first  melted  into  air;  the 
objective  treatment  and  consideration  of  the 
things  of  this  world  became  possible ;  and  at 


152    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

the  same  time  the  subjective  side  of  conscious- 
ness asserted  itself  with  corresponding  em- 
phasis, man  became  a  spiritual  individual,  and 
recognized  himself  as  such."  In  every  phase 
of  life  Burckhardt  traces  the  effects  of  this 
momentous  change.  In  the  new  utilitarian 
views  of  society  ;  in  the  development  of  state 
omnipotence  on  the  one  hand,  of  republican- 
ism on  the  other ;  in  Macchiavellian  poli- 
tics; in  the  beginnings  of  economic  science;  in 
the  beginnings  of  an  exact  study  of  zoology, 
botany,  and  astronomy;  in  the  great  wave  of 
geographical  exploration  setting  in  with  the 
fifteenth  century  ;  in  the  discovery  of  natural 
beauty,  signalized,  for  instance,  by  Petrarch's 
ascents  of  mountain  peaks  ;  in  the  striving  for 
universality  of  culture,  as  shown  in  such  men 
as  Leon  Battista  Alberti  or  Lionardo  da  Vinci ; 
in  the  revival  of  antiquity,  —  everywhere  we 
are  made  to  see  manifestations  of  the  same 
fundamental  fact,  the  emancipation  of  the  in- 
dividual from  the  fetters  of  tradition,  the  sub- 
stitution of  individual  reason  and  feeling  for 
collective  sentiment  and  thought.  What  a 
distinctively  evolutionary  character  this  point 
of  view  imparts  to  Burckhardt's  treatment  of 
poetry  and   how  it  is  just   this  evolutionary 


GERMAN    LITERARY  CRITICISM    153 

character  which  gives  to  his  literary  criticism 
its  highest  charm,  may  best  be  seen  by  a  single 
quotation,  a  passage  on  Dante's  Sonnets  and 
Canzoni.  "  The  prose  of  the  Vita  Nuova  in 
which  Dante  gives  an  account  of  the  origin 
of  each  poem,  is  as  wonderful  as  the  verses 
themselves,  and  forms  with  them  a  uniform 
whole,  inspired  with  the  deepest  glow  of  pas- 
sion. With  unflinching  frankness  and  sincerity 
he  lays  bare  every  shade  of  his  joy  and  his  sor- 
row, and  moulds  it  resolutely  into  the  strictest 
forms  of  art.  Reading  attentively  these  Son- 
nets and  Canzoni,  and  the  marvelous  frag- 
ments of  the  diary  of  his  youth  which  lie 
between  them,  we  fancy  that  throughout  the 
Middle  Ages  the  poets  had  been  purposely 
fleeing  from  themselves,  and  that  he  was  the 
first  to  seek  his  own  soul.  Before  his  time  we 
meet  with  many  an  artistic  verse ;  but  he  is 
the  first  artist  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word, — 
the  first  who  consciously  cast  immortal  matter 
into  an  immortal  form.  Subjective  feeling  has 
here  a  full  objective  truth  and  greatness,  and 
most  of  it  is  so  set  forth  that  all  ages  and  peo- 
ples can  make  it  their  own." 

Both  Hettner  and  Burckhardt,  as  we  have 
seen,  are  primarily  concerned  with  the  devel- 


154    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

opment  of  individuality  ;  the  whole  of  a  na- 
tional organism  is  to  them  in  the  main  only 
the  background  from  which  there  stand  out  a 
few  great  personalities.  Quite  different  is  the 
standpoint  of  the  two  other  noteworthy  lit- 
terateurs whom  I  mentioned  as  their  fellow- 
workers  in  the  history  of  civilization,  Freytag 
and  Riehl.  These  men  also  are  far  removed 
from  the  deductive  methods  of  the  Hegelian 
philosophy  ;  they  also  betray  clearly  the  in- 
fluence of  the  exact  sciences,  they  also  studv 
primarily  the  development  of  individual  types ; 
but  in  one  important  respect  they  are  more 
closely  related  to  Hegel  than  they  themselves 
perhaps  would  have  been  willing  to  admit, — 
the  individual  type  is  to  them  much  more 
strictly  than  to  Hettner  and  Burckhardt  a  re- 
presentative of  the  species  ;  the  real  object  of 
their  study  is  the  evolution  of  the  national 
soul  as  seen  in  the  evolution  of  the  individual. 
Both  men  have  expressed  in  unambiguous 
terms  their  views  as  to  the  relation  of  the 
individual  to  this  national  soul.  Freytag  de- 
clares: "Millions  of  individuals  make  the 
people,  in  millions  of  souls  the  life  of  the 
people  is  pulsating,  but  the  conscious  and  un- 
conscious working    together  of  the  millions 


GERMAN    LITERARY  CRITICISM     155 

produces  a  spiritual  content  in  which,  at  times 
at  least,  the  soul  of  the  whole  people  appears 
as  a  living,  self-creating  unity."  And  similarly 
Riehl :  "  The  age,  /.  e.,  the  nation  at  a  partic- 
ular stage  of  its  development,  creates  the  man 
and  the  man  helps  to  create  his  age ;  every 
epoch-making  mind  is  at  the  same  time  child 
and  father,  disciple  and  master  of  his  age,  and 
the  more  fully  he  surrenders  himself  to  it,  the 
more  fully  will  he  control  it."  And  with  equal 
frankness  and  precision  both  men  have  stated 
which  element  in  this  incessant  intermingling 
between  the  individual  and  the  universal 
seemed  to  them  the  most  important.  Riehl, 
in  justifying  his  collecting  testimony  from 
every  sort  of  private  and  domestic  usages, 
institutions,  and  implements,  says:  "These 
studies  on  isolated  antiquarian  matter,  on  cus- 
toms and  habits  often  very  puerile  and  irra- 
tional, on  house  and  home,  on  garments  and 
utensils,  are  indeed,  if  taken  by  themselves, 
nothing  but  idle  rubbish  ;  they  receive  their 
scientific  and  poetic  consecration  only  through 
their  relation  to  the  wonderful  organism  of  a 
whole  national  personality.  For  of  this  national 
personality  it  can,  indeed,  be  said  with  absolute 
truth,  that   man  is   man's  worthiest   study." 


156    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

And  Freytag  introduces  his  Bilder  aus  der 
deutschen  Vergangenheit  with  a  declaration  of 
his  intention  to  give  in  them  "  a  picture  of 
the  growth  of  our  national  soul  during  the 
last  two  thousand  years."  "What  is  printed 
here  from  old  documents,  are  largely  reports 
of  men  of  the  past  about  their  own  experi- 
ences, not  infrequently  insignificant  incidents 
in  the  life  of  the  common  crowd.  But  just  as 
every  gesture  of  a  strange  man  whom  we  meet 
for  the  first  time,  his  address,  his  first  words, 
give  us  the  image  of  a  fixed  personality,  an 
imperfect  and  unfinished  image,  to  be  sure, 
but  yet  a  whole  ;  so  every  document  in  which 
the  life  of  an  individual  is  revealed  has,  if  we 
mistake  not,  the  curious  effect  of  bringing  be- 
fore us  with  sudden  clearness  an  image  of  the 
life  of  the  people,  a  very  incomplete  and  un- 
satisfactory image,  yet  likewise  a  whole,  around 
which  a  large  variety  of  ideas  and  facts,  stored 
up  in  our  mind,  flash-like  shoot  together,  as 
crystals  around  their  centre." 

It  is  not  surprising  that  such  views  as  these 
should  have  led  both  Freytag  and  Riehl  to  a 
treatment  of  literature  and  art  which  is  more 
closely  related  to  sociology  than  to  aesthet- 
ics.   To  Freytag  a  poem,  a  novel,  a  drama  is, 


GERMAN    LITERARY  CRITICISM    157 

indeed,  primarily  an  historical  document,  a 
document  in  which  a  particular  stage  in  the 
development  of  the  national  soul  is  recorded. 
And  although  the  author  of  Soil  und  Haken,  of 
Die  Journalisten,  and  Die  Tecbnik  des  Dramas 
hardly  needs  to  be  defended  against  the  in- 
sinuation that  he  was  insensible  to  the  specifi- 
cally aesthetic  charms  of  a  work  of  art,  it  is 
nevertheless  true  that  the  innermost  spring  of 
his  nature  wells  up  only  whenever  he  discovers 
a  striking  instance  of  the  mysterious  connection 
between  individual  feeling  and  national  life.  It 
is  in  this  spirit  that  he  views  the  martial  tradi- 
tions of  old  Germanic  herodom,  the  monastic 
culture  of  the  tenth  century,  the  Minnesong  and 
the  Volkslied,  the  spiritual  struggles  through 
which  Luther  became  the  leader  of  his  people, 
the  beginnings  of  journalism  in  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries,  the  private  corre- 
spondence and  literary  activity  of  Frederick 
the  Great.  It  is  in  this  spirit  that  he  traces,  in 
the  introduction  to  the  fourth  volume  of  the 
Bildery  the  development  of  German  culture 
from  the  Thirty  Years'  War  downward.  In 
all  other  countries  political  ascendency  and 
literary  greatness  have  been  simultaneous. 
iEschylus  was  a  contemporary  of  the  Persian 


158    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

wars ;  the  golden  age  of  Latin  poetry  was  the 
age  of  imperialistic  expansion  of  the  Roman 
people;  Shakspere  was  the  poetic  expression 
of  English  popular  energy  in  the  days  of  the 
Armada ;  Corneille  and  Moliere  reflect  the 
brilliant  Parisian  society  under  Louis  XIV. 
"  Quite  otherwise  in  Germany.  While  every- 
where else  the  state  is  like  a  body  whose 
healthy  vitality  brings  forth  the  works  of  the 
spirit,  there  arises  in  Germany  since  the  Thirty 
Years'  War,  a  new  national  culture  out  of  the 
most  decrepit  and  rotten  political  institutions; 
it  arises  from  individuals  entirely  devoid  of 
that  discipline  of  mind  and  character  which 
only  the  participation  in  public  affairs  can 
give ;  it  at  first  seeks  support  in  the  imitation 
of  foreign  models,  gradually  becomes  more 
independent  and  free,  and  finally  shines  forth 
as  an  illustrious  example  to  other  nations, 
combining  the  highest  beauty  of  poetry  with 
the  noblest  freedom  of  science.  German  cul- 
ture of  the  eighteenth  century  was,  indeed, 
the  wonderful  creation  of  a  soul  without  a 
body.  And  what  is  still  more  remarkable,  this 
new  national  culture  was  to  help  in  a  round- 
about way  to  bring  back  to  Germany  her  lost 
political  greatness.    From  it  there  were  to  de- 


GERMAN    LITERARY   CRITICISM     159 

velop  political  enthusiasm  and  passion,  party 
life,  parliamentary  institutions,  national  unity. 
Never  has  a  literature  played  such  a  part  and 
solved  such  tasks,  as  German  literature  from 
1750  to  the  present." 

Still  more  pronounced  than  in  Freytag  is 
the  sociological  aspect  of  literary  and  artistic 
study  in  Riehl ;  indeed,  there  is  in  Riehl  a  de- 
cided tendency  toward  emphasizing  the  influ- 
ence of  social  and  intellectual  conditions  at  the 
expense  of  the  creative  individuality,  so  that 
he  may  justly  be  called  the  father  of  that  his- 
torical school  which  at  present  has  its  chief 
exponent  in  Karl  Lamprecht.1  It  can  hardly 
be  said  that  Riehl  has  advanced  very  far  on 
the  way  toward  the  goal  which  he  undoubtedly 
had  in  mind  in  this  sociological  study  of  intel- 
lectual life.  His  aim  unquestionably  was  to 
represent  the  working  of  the  social  laws  which 
regulate  literary  and  artistic  as  well  as  economic 

1  An  extremely  interesting  account  of  Riehl' s  whole 
activity  from  this  point  of  view  is  given  by  Henry  Simons- 
feld  in  his  essay,  W.  H.  Riehl  ah  Kulturhistoriker ;  Fest- 
rede  gebalten  in  der  k.  b.  Akademie  d.  Wiss.  zu  Miinchen, 
Munich,  1898.  Cf.  also  G.  Steinhausen,  Freytag,  Burck- 
hardt,  Riehl,  und  ihre  Auffassung  der  Kulturgeschichte,  in 
Neue  Jahrbiicher  fur  das  klassische  Altertum,  Geschichte 
und  Deutsche  Litteratur,  1898. 


160    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

and  political  activity.  What  is  meant  by  such 
laws  may  perhaps  be  made  clear  by  some  words 
of  the  present  writer  printed  elsewhere,  in 
which  he  has  tried  to  formulate  the  regulating 
influence  exerted  upon  literature  by  two  ele- 
mental human  tendencies,  the  tendency  toward 
personal  freedom  and  the  tendency  toward 
social  organization.  "  The  tendency  toward 
personal  freedom  leads,  in  literature,  to  the 
observation  and  representation  of  whatever  is 
striking,  genuine,  individual ;  in  short,  to  real- 
ism. The  tendency  toward  social  organiza- 
tion leads,  in  literature,  to  the  observation  and 
representation  of  whatever  is  beautiful,  sig- 
nificant, universal ;  in  short,  to  idealism.  The 
individualistic  tendency,  if  unchecked,  may  lead 
either  to  a  vulgar  naturalism  or  to  a  fantastic 
mysticism.  The  collectivistic  tendency,  if  un- 
checked, may  lead  to  an  empty  conventional- 
ism. Those  ages  and  those  men  in  whom  the 
individualistic  and  the  collectivistic  tendencies 
are  evenly  balanced  produce  the  works  of  lit- 
erature which  are  truly  great."  It  is  perhaps 
safe  to  assume  that  Riehl  when  he  speaks, — 
as  he  frequently  does  speak,  —  of  the  laws  of 
literary  and  artistic  taste,  had  some  such  regu- 
lative influence  as  that  of  these  two  funda- 


GERMAN    LITERARY  CRITICISM    161 

mental  tendencies  in  mind.  But  he  never  ex- 
plicitly states  exactly  what  is  to  be  understood 
by  his  "laws";  he  often  seems  to  confound 
law  and  fashion  ;  instead  of  reducing  the  vari- 
ety of  social  and  literary  or  artistic  phenomena 
to  a  common  first  principle,  he  confines  himself, 
for  the  most  part,  to  bringing  out  the  corre- 
spondence between  certain  phenomena  in  the 
social  or  political  sphere,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
certain  phenomena  in  the  literary  or  artistic 
sphere  on  the  other. 

If  this  is  a  limitation  of  the  service  rendered 
by  Riehl  to  literary  and  artistic  criticism,  —  as 
it  seems  to  be,  —  it  should  at  once  be  added 
that  within  these  limits  set  by  himself,  Riehl 
has  done  most  signal  service.  In  the  charac- 
terization of  the  social  elements  of  literary  or 
artistic  phenomena,  in  the  treatment  of  such 
themes  as,  for  instance,  the  relation  of  music 
to  popular  life,  the  development  of  the  musical 
ear,  the  evolution  of  the  sense  for  landscape  in 
their  correspondence  with  the  various  stages  of 
national  culture,1  he  is  unsurpassed,  and  in  this 

1  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Edgar  Steiger,  in  his 
Das  Werden  des  neuen  Dramas,  is  directly  or  indirectly  in- 
fluenced by  Riehl's  views  on  the  development  of  taste,  when 
he  attempts  to  show  that  with  the  advance  of  culture  the 


162    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

respect  even  such  men  as  Georg  Brandes  and 
Karl  Lamprecht  must  recognize  in  him  their 
master. 

This  sketch  of  the  principal  representatives, 
in  Germany,  of  what  may  be  called  the  method 
of  Kulturgeschichte  as  applied  to  the  studv  of 
literature  and  art,  necessarily  brief  and  incom- 
plete as  it  is,1  would  be  entirely  insufficient 
were  it  not  to  include  the  name  of  a  man  who 
during  the  last  thirty  years  has  stood  per- 
haps more  fully  than  any  other  writer  for  the 
highest  ideals  of  our  national  culture,  Her- 
man Grimm.  Herman  Grimm  is  not  a  literary 
sociologist  like  Wilhelm  Riehl ;  at  times  it 
seems  as  though  he  were  opposed  to  all  sci- 
entific criticism  of  literature ;  he  is  an  artist 
rather  than  a  critic,  an  artist  of  reproductive 

limits  of  what  is  considered  ugly  steadily  become  narrower, 
or,  as  he  expresses  it,  that  "  with  every  new  century  there 
are  fewer  ugly  things  "  (II,  28  f.). 

'  It  is  clear,  for  instance,  that  in  a  fuller  treatment  of  the 
subject  such  men  as  Karl  Biedermann,  the  author  of  Dcutsch- 
land  im  18.  Jakrhundert ;  Karl  Hillebrand,  the  author 
of  Zeiten,  Vblher  und  Menscben  ,•  Karl  Justi,  the  author  of 
Velasquez  and  Winckelmann  und  sein  Jahrhundert,  would 
have  to  be  considered  individually,  as  characteristic  types 
of  the  class  of  writers  basing  their  criticism  upon  the  study 
of  civilization. 


GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM     163 

genius.  Yet  even  Herman  Grimm's  artistic 
temper  has  been  drawn  into  the  service  of 
scientific  criticism.  He  has  never  attempted 
to  formulate  a  general  law  of  literary  or 
artistic  development.  But  in  analyzing  and 
interpreting  the  great  works  of  the  world's 
literature  and  art,  he  always  makes  us  feel 
that  they  are  necessary  manifestations  of  a 
deep,  mysterious  force  which  regulates  all 
human  life.  And  if  there  is  anything  that 
stands  out  as  the  central  motive  of  his  whole 
literary  activity,  it  is  the  desire  to  reproduce 
before  the  eyes  of  the  present  the  elements  out 
of  which  have  grown  the  great  spiritual  lead- 
ers of  mankind,  a  Homer,  a  Michel  Angelo, 
a  Raphael,  a  Goethe.  Grimm,  then,  is  not 
less  an  evolutionist  than  Riehl  or  Taine.  But 
whereas  for  Riehl  and  Taine  the  general  move- 
ment is  of  prime  importance,  Grimm,  like 
Jacob  Burckhardt,  lays  the  chief  emphasis 
upon  the  individual  who  represents  the  gen- 
eral movement.  Taine  is  greater  in  analyzing 
men  who  seem  to  have  been  nothing  but  tools 
in  the  intellectual  or  moral  development  of 
mankind,  whose  strength  seems  to  have  been 
absorbed  by  living  out  a  certain  phase  of  the 
world's  history ;  Grimm  is  greater  in  depict- 


1 64    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

ing  men  who  seem  to  stand  by  themselves, 
who  seem  to  have  taken  refuge  from  the 
whirlpool  of  circumstances  and  fate  into  the 
serene  regions  of  personal  freedom. 

Ill 

Some  twenty-five  years  ago  there  was  coined, 
by  Erich  Schmidt  I  believe,  a  term  which  has 
attained  considerable  currency  since,  the  term 
Goetbe-Philologie.  It  is  an  ugly  term,  and  for 
the  sake  of  good  taste  it  would  be  better  if  it 
never  had  been  created.  But  the  fact  of  its 
having  been  received  so  widely,  and  into  such 
good  company  as  German  professorial  circles, 
is  significant ;  it  is  an  official  recognition  of  a 
process  which  has  been  going  on  for  genera- 
tions, the  process  of  a  gradual  reaching  out 
of  philology,  or  the  evolutionary  method  of 
studying  language,  into  the  sphere  of  literature. 
Philology  is  essentially  a  science  of  origins. 
It  studies  the  development  of  word-structure 
through  the  shifting  of  vowels  and  consonants, 
through  the  increase  or  loss  of  inflections  ;  it 
studies  the  development  of  word-meaning 
through  analogy  and  differentiation  of  ideas  ; 
it  studies  the  development  of  the  sentence 
through  coordination  and  subordination.    In 


GERMAN    LITERARY  CRITICISM     165 

other  words,  philology  studies  linguistic  growth 
with  regard  both  to  the  changes  of  form  and 
to  the  changes  of  content.  The  philological 
method  of  studying  literature,  also,  is  con- 
cerned with  these  two  kinds  of  change  ;  it  is 
concerned  either  with  the  variations  of  literary 
structure  or  with  the  variations  of  literary  sub- 
ject-matter, or  with  both;  in  any  case  it  is 
chiefly  directed  toward  bringing  out  the  origi- 
nal type.  That  this  method  of  studying  liter- 
ature is  again,  like  the  kulturhistorische  method, 
essentially  scientific  and  essentially  evolution- 
ary, need  not  be  emphasized.  What  have  been 
the  results  of  this  method  thus  far? 

There  can  be  no  question  that  the  largely 
mechanical  way  in  which  the  philological 
method  has  been  and  is  being  pursued  by  the 
average  scholar,  especially  by  the  authors  of 
the  stereotype  ^uellenuntersuchungen^  or  criti- 
cal investigations  of  a  writer's  material,  which 
form  so  large  a  part  of  the  yearly  output  of  the 
German  universities  in  doctor-dissertations, 
has  done  much  to  discredit  this  method  in  the 
eyes  of  liberally  trained  and  cultivated  men. 
It  often  would  seem  as  if  the  whole  scientific 
creed  of  these  dissectors  of  literary  achieve- 
ments consisted  in  the  conviction  that  under  no 


166    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

circumstances  must  the  writer  who  just  happens 
to  be  the  victim  of  their  anatomical  treatment 
be  assumed  to  have  had  an  idea  of  his  own. 
Whatever  he  has  of  ideas  he  must  have  bor- 
rowed from  some  one  else,  and  this  some  one 
else  must  again  have  borrowed  from  some 
one  else,  and  so  on,  so  that  it  may  truly  be  said 
that  the  primal  "  some  one  else"  plays  in  these 
philological  investigations  the  same  part  which, 
according  to  Spinoza,  the  so-called  primal 
cause  plays  or  used  to  play  in  theological 
discussions,  the  part,  namely,  of  an  asylum 
ignorantiae. 

It  would,  however,  be  obviously  unjust  to 
gauge  the  merit  of  the  philological  method  by 
these  factory  wares  of  the  doctor-dissertation 
kind ;  its  true  spirit  we  must  seek  with  the 
masters,  with  the  men  who  represent  not  its 
defects  but  its  virtues,  with  philologists  of  the 
type  of  Friedrich  August  Wolf,  Jacob  Grimm, 
Karl  Lachmann,  or  Wilhelm  Scherer.  Let  us 
consider  one  or  two  cases  in  which  the  philo- 
logical method  as  applied  by  such  men  has 
been  particularly  successful  in  elucidating  lit- 
erary origins. 

I  suppose  there  is  hardly  a  scholar  living 
who  would  still  cling,  as  Scherer  did  in  his  His- 


GERMAN    LITERARY  CRITICISM     167 

tory  of  German  Literature,  to  Lachmann's  theory 
of  the  composition  of  the  Nibelungenlied.  The 
twenty  so-called  lays  which  Lachmann  cut  out 
of  the  thirty-nine  "adventures"  of  the  Nibe- 
lungen  text  and  which  he  held  to  have  been 
the  original  form  of  the  Middle  High  German 
version  of  the  subject,  belonging  'to  about  as 
many  different  authors,  are  clearly  nothing 
but  arbitrary  constructions  of  his  own ;  they 
are  no  lays  at  all ;  they  have  a  meaning  only 
as  cantos  or  chapters  of  a  larger  whole.  And 
no  one  who  reads  the  Nibelungenlied  without 
hypercritical  bias  can  resist  the  impression 
that  here  we  have,  indeed,  a  whole  which,  in 
spite  of  occasional  discrepancies  and  not  infre- 
quent irrelevancies,  possesses  a  grand  unity  of 
conception  and  has  a  noble  heroic  movement 
going  through  it  all.  The  central  theme  of 
this  epic  is  Kriemhild's  love,  grief,  and  revenge ; 
and  everything  throughout  its  thirty-nine  "ad- 
ventures" is  subordinated  to  this  one  theme, 
from  Kriemhild's  foreboding  dream  in  the  first 
canto  to  the  fearful  massacre  of  friend  and 
foe  in  the  last.  Throughout  the  poem  we  feel 
something  of  the  striding  of  Fate,  of  the  over- 
whelming inevitableness  with  which  guilt  is 
followed  by  death,  and  joy  is  turned  into  sor- 


168    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

row.  But  all  these  considerations  cannot  take 
away  from  the  gratitude  which  we  owe  to  Lach- 
mann  for  having  by  his  philological  method 
first  shed  light  upon  the  stages  through  which 
the  Nibelungen  legend  passed  before  it  reached 
the  form  of  the  Middle  High  German  epic. 
That  originally  the  Nibelungen  legend  was 
treated  not  as  a  "whole,  but  in  its  various  indi- 
vidual episodes ;  that  its  original  poetic  form 
was  not  that  of  a  large,- connected  epic,  but  of 
short,  independent,  ballad-like  lays  ;  and  that 
these  independent  lays  were  still  in  existence 
J*.  *at  the  time  of  the  author  of  the  Nibelungenlied 
and  by  him  were  welded  together  and  made 
parts  of  a  great  epic  organism, — this  is  the 
result  of  Lachmann's  investigations  which  will 
stand. 

Or,  to  take  another,  more  recent  instance 
of  the  influence  exerted  upon  literary  criticism 
by  the  philological  method,  what  a  beneficial, 
truly  enlightening  effect  has  this  method  had 
upon  the  study  of  Goethe's  Faust  I  Not  as 
though  the  spiritual  import  of  this  poem  had 
not  been  understood,  as  far  as  such  works  can 
be  understood,  even  before  Heinrich  Diintzer, 
Wilhelm  Scherer,  Gustav  von  Lo*per,  and 
Erich  Schmidt   began   their  researches   upon 


GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM     169 

the  growth  of  Goethe's  Faust  conception.  No 
amount  of  philological  knowledge  will  ever 
give  real  insight  into  the  spirit  of  a  work  of 
genius,  if  the  instinctive  intuition  of  this  spirit 
is  absent.  But  one  thing  the  researches  of 
these  men  have  undoubtedly  accomplished. 
They  have  freed  us  for  the  time  being — and  let 
us  hope  for  all  time  —  from  the  metaphysical 
interpretations  which,  until  the  middle  of  the 
last  century,  so  largely  obstructed  the  clear  view 
of  Goethe's  work ;  they  have  led  us  directly 
into  Goethe's  own  presence.  And  if  the  reader 
who  is  introduced  by  them  to  Goethe  misses 
Goethe's  spirit,  it  is  not  their  fault ;  for  the 
principal  office  of  these  researches  is  to  enable 
the  reader  to  judge  for  himself,  to  make  him 
see  with  his  own  eyes  the  original  type  from 
which  the  later  work  in  all  its  fullness  has 
developed.  It  was,  indeed,  a  striking  vindica- 
tion of  the  value  of  these  studies,  when  some 
twenty  years  ago  Erich  Schmidt  discovered  the 
manuscript  of  Goethe's  original  Faust  concep- 
tion, and  here  found  revealed  in  strongest  out- 
line exactly  that  type  of  poetical  conception 
toward  which  these  philological  investigations 
had  pointed  as  the  probable  germ  of  the  whole 
poem,  —  the  conception  of  the  reckless  Storm 


170    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

and  Stress  individualist  whose  titanic  self- 
assertion  transgresses  all  law  and  transcends 
all  happiness. 

Or,  to  take  still  another  case,  what  would 
the  study  of  comparative  literature  be  but  an 
amateurish  collecting  of  similar  phenomena  in 
the  literatures  of  different  nations,  —  and  it 
must  be  admitted  that  a  good  many  so-called 
students  of  comparative  literature  are  nothing 
more  than  amateur  collectors,  —  if  philology 
had  not  given  to  the  best  representatives  at 
least  of  this  youthful  science  a  safe  direction 
in  the  search  for  literary  origins.  This  is  de- 
cidedly the  point  of  view  from  which  the  re- 
lation between  Provencal,  Old  French,  and 
Middle  High  German  literature  has  been  stud- 
ied by  such  masters  as  Diez,  Bartsch,  and 
Wackernagel ;  it  is  the  point  of  view  from 
which  Benfey,  Max  Muller,  Reinhold  Kohler, 
and  others  have  traced  the  course  of  literary 
and  intellectual  connections  between  orient  and 
Occident;  and  no  one  who  has  turned  the 
pages  of  Max  Koch's  Zeitschrift  fur  vergleich- 
ende  Literaturgeschichte  can  fail  to  see  that 
more  and  more  this  point  of  view  is  coming 
to  be  universally  and  exclusively  accepted. 
Comparative  literature,  then,  is  converting  it- 


GERMAN    LITERARY  CRITICISM     171 

self  into  a  science  by  adopting  the  evolution- 
ary principle.1 

It  would  be  useless  to  attempt  here  an  enu- 
meration of  the  works  in  which,  during  the 
last  generation,  the  philological  method  has  led 
not  only  to  analytical  investigations  of  literary 
origins  but  also  to  synthetic  representations 
of  literary  development.  But  it  should  at 
least  be  said  that  the  representative  works  of 
this  kind  belonging  to  the  last  few  decades 
cover  a  remarkably  wide  area  of  scientific  in- 
quiry ;  indeed,  taken  together,  well-nigh  em- 
brace the  history  of  the  whole  world's  litera- 
ture. Oldenberg's  and  Deussen's  studies  in 
Hindu  literature  and  Hindu  philosophy; 
Noldeke's  Studies  in  Ancient  Arabian  Poetry 
and  History  of  the  Koran ;  Rohde's  History 
of  the  Greek  Novel;  Mahrenholtz's  Moliere; 
Korting's  Petrarch  and  Boccaccio  ;  Muncker's 
Klopstock ;  Erich  Schmidt's  Lessing  ;  Minor's 
Schiller ;  R.  M.  Meyer's  or  Bielschowsky's 
Goethe ;  Brahm's  Heinrich  von  Kleist,  —  are 
only  a  few  examples,  selected  at  random,  which 
prove  that  the  philological  method  has  practi- 

1  Cf.  W.  Wetz,  Shakespeare  vom  Standpunkte  der 
verg.  Liter  aturgeschichte,  1890,  and  Veber  Liter  atur ge- 
schichte,  1801. 


1 72    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

cally  taken  possession  of  the  academic  study 
of  literature  even  in  its  synthetic  form,  and 
has,  therefore,  helped  to  establish  the  predomi- 
nance of  evolutionary  principles,  in  this  respect 
also. 

IV 

It  remains  to  cast  a  glance  at  a  method  of 
literary  study  which,  though  only  just  begin- 
ning strongly  to  assert  its  influence,  seems  des- 
tined to  become  of  great,  nay  of  paramount 
importance  in  the  further  development  of  lit- 
erary criticism,  —  the  psychological  method. 
Neither  the  metaphysical  nor  the  historical  nor 
the  philological  way  of  considering  literature, 
although  each  of  them  gives  us  valuable  insights 
into  literary  growth,  goes  quite  to  the  root  of 
the  matter;  neither  of  these  methods  quite 
touches  the  spot  from  which  there  spring  forth 
either  the  work  of  art  itself  or  the  sensations 
resulting  from  its  being  received  by  the  public. 
Only  by  studying  the  genesis  of  the  emotions 
which  produce  a  work  of  art  in  the  mind  of 
the  artist,  and  by  studying  the  emotional  pro- 
cesses which  a  work  of  art  calls  forth  in  the 
minds  of  its  hearers  or  spectators,  can  we  ar- 
rive at  the  foundation  for  a  full  understanding 


GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM    173 

of  literary  or  artistic  evolution.  This  method 
has,  of  course,  never  been  entirely  neglected. 
We  find  traces  of  it  even  in  such  intensely 
speculative  writers  as  Schelling  and  Hegel ;  it 
plays  a  not  unimportant  part  in  Friedrich 
Theodor  Vischer's  aesthetic  theory  ;  it  is  seen 
more  or  less  distinctly  in  the  literary  investiga- 
tions of  the  historical  and  philological  school. 
But  only  recently,  only  since  Fechner  and 
Wundt  established  a  real  science  of  psycho- 
logy, have  attempts  been  made  to  apply  the 
psychological  method  in  a  systematic  manner 
to  the  study  of  literature. 

It  would  be  tempting  to  show  here  on  a 
larger  scale  the  influence  exerted  by  the  psy- 
chological method  in  various  directions ;  to 
show,  for  instance,  how  it  affected  the  literary 
criticism  of  such  men  as  Kuno  Fischer,  Eugen 
Kuhnemann,  or  Anton  Bettelheim  ;  how  it 
colored  Steinthal's  view  of  the  popular  epic ; 
how  it  determined  Friedrich  Nietzsche's  con- 
ception of  "  the  birth  of  tragedy  ; "  how  it 
induced  R.  M.  Werner  to  undertake  a  syste- 
matic description  of  the  growth  of  lyric  poetry 
from  the  first  "  inner  experience  "  to  the  whole 
variety  of  artistic  forms  ;  '  how  it  led  Ernst 

1  Cf.  Richard  Maria  Werner,  Lyrik  u.  Lyriker,  1890. 


174-    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

Elster  to  the  attempt  of  founding  a  "  science 
of  literature  "  upon  a  searching  analysis  of  the 
normal  processes  of  human  imagination  and 
emotion.1  I  shall,  however,  confine  myself  to 
a  somewhat  more  detailed  consideration  of  a 
work  which  seems  to  me  by  far  the  most 
original  and  suggestive  contribution  yet  made 
by  a  German  to  the  psychological  study  of 
literature,  Johannes  Volkelt's  JEsthetik  des 
Tragischen  (Munich,  1897).  This  book  is 
closely  connected  with  the  new  life  which  has 
sprung  up  during  the  last  decades  in  German 
literature,  especially  in  the  drama.  For,  if  I 
mistake  not,  the  personal  motive  of  Volkelt's 
thought  lies  in  his  desire  to  justify  before  his 
scientific  conscience  the  new  forms  of  tragic 
art  which  are  now  coming  to  light  in  the  pro- 
ductions of  such  men  as  Ibsen  and  Hauptmann. 
But  the  intellectual  significance  of  this  book 
is  more  than  temporary.  It  is  an  achievement 
that  opens  up  new  paths.  It  is  the  first  book 
to  show  in  a  comprehensive  manner  the  great 
variety  of  tragic  types,  the  many  transitions 
which  lead  from  the  least  developed  to  the 
most  complete  forms  of  tragic  emotion  ;  it  is 

1  Cf.  Ernst  Elster,  Prinzipien  der  Liter aturwissenschaft, 
1897. 


GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM     175 

the  first  successful  attempt  to  break  away  en- 
tirely from  aesthetic  canons  which  since  the 
days  of  the  Renaissance,  chiefly  by  means  of 
a  too  rigid  application  of  Aristotelean  prin- 
ciples, have  held  the  theory  of  tragedy  within 
narrow  and  artificial  limits.  In  short,  it  is 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  revision  of  the 
theory  of  tragic  sensations  from  the  evolu- 
tionary point  of  view. 

I  shall  try  to  bring  out  this  essentially 
evolutionary  nature  of  Volkelt's  investigation 
by  considering  his  answers  to  the  following 
questions:  (1)  Is  sublimity  of  character  a 
necessary  element  of  the  tragic  hero  ?  (2)  Is 
guilt  a  necessary  element  of  tragedy  ?  (3)  What 
is  the  essence  of  the  tragic  catastrophe  ?  (4) 
What  is  the  effect  of  tragedy  upon  the  human 
mind? 

1.  It  is  a  matter  of  course  that,  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  elements  that  make  the  tragic 
hero,  Volkelt  should  have  nothing  in  com- 
mon with  the  absurd  and  obsolete  view  of 
pre-Lessingian  times  that  an  exalted  station, 
princely  or  noble  birth,  were  a  necessary  con- 
dition of  tragic  character.  But  Volkelt  also 
rejects  a  view  which  in  some  circles  is  by  no 
means  considered  obsolete,  —  the  view  that  a 


176    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

tragic  hero  cannot  be  thought  of  without 
grandeur  of  soul.  Is  there  any  grandeur  in 
such  characters  as  Shakspere's  Henry  VI, 
Prince  Arthur,  or  Hamlet ;  in  Lessing's 
Emilia ;  in  Goethe's  Tasso,  or  Grillparzer's 
Rudolf  II?  And  do  not  these  characters, 
nevertheless,  impress  us  as  truly  tragic  figures  ? 
No,  grandeur  of  soul  is  not  a  necessary  con- 
dition of  the  tragic  type  ;  it  is  only  one  of  the 
elements  which  may  or  may  not  enter  into 
the  constitution  of  the  tragic  type.  In  other 
words,  the  expression  "  tragic  character  "  is  not 
a  fixed  term  ;  there  is  a  large  scale  of  characters 
which  may  be  called  tragic ;  there  is  a  grada- 
tion of  the  tragic  from  lower  to  higher  forms. 
There  exists  only  one  absolute  prerequisite 
for  a  tragic  character;  he  must  not  be  hope- 
lessly and  irretrievably  vulgar  or  common- 
place. There  must  be  something  in  him  which 
appeals  to  our  higher  nature,  something  which 
calls  out  in  us  a  decided  human  sympathy, 
something  which  gives  us  a  strong  sense  of 
the  contrast  between  the  apparent  claims  of 
this  man  to  happiness  and  his  actual  suffer- 
ing, of  the  contrast  between  what  ought  to  be 
and  what  is,  of  the  contrast  between  human 
aspirations  and  the  mysterious  ways  of  Fate. 


GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM     177 

Where  this  feeling  of  contrast  is  not  aroused, 
there  the  suffering  appears  not  as  tragic,  but 
merely  as  sad  or  pitiful.  The  lowest  form  of 
the  tragic,  then,  is  that  which  is  largely  still 
within  the  sphere  of  the  merely  sad,  yet  at 
the  same  time  in  some  respects  is  raised  above 
it;  the  lowest  form  of  the  tragic  is  a  transition- 
form  from  the  pitiful  to  the  tragic.  A  striking 
example  of  this  tragic  type  is  Hauptmann's 
'The  Weavers.  Every  one  of  these  disfran- 
chised, downtrodden,  physically  and  mentally 
crippled  proletarians,  whose  suffering  Haupt- 
mann's drama  brings  before  us,  is,  taken 
singly,  too  miserable  to  arouse  anything  but 
pity.  Taken  together,  however,  as  a  social 
group,  as  representatives  of  a  class  in  whom 
the  feeling  of  human  dignity  is  for  the  first 
time  dimly  awakening,  of  a  class  which,  if  once 
fully  aroused  to  its  great  social  mission,  would 
be  able  to  change  the  face  of  the  earth,  these 
poor  weavers  are  tragic  heroes  whose  suffering 
has  something  in  it  of  the  martyrdom  for  a 
noble  cause,  and  makes  us  feel  the  contrast  of 
what  is  and  what  ought  to  be. 

A  higher  type  of  tragic  character  is  that 
which  shows  us  a  man,  not  by  any  means  ex- 
traordinary or  great,  yet  raised  in  one  particu- 


178     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

lar  respect  above  the  common  crowd  and 
being  driven  into  ruin  by  this  very  divergence 
from  the  ordinary.  Such  a  tragic  character  is 
Kleist's  Michael  Kohlhaas.  Kohlhaas  is  a 
plain  man  of  the  people,  a  shrewd,  practical 
horse-dealer,  a  man  apparently  without  any 
claim  to  greatness.  But  there  is  one  trait  that 
gives  to  this  plain,  practical  man  the  stamp  of 
the  true  idealist;  he  has  a  sense  of  justice, 
absolutely  incorruptible  and  unbending.  And 
it  is  just  this  sense  of  justice  that  forces  him 
to  take  revenge  for  injustice  with  the  sword 
in  his  hand ;  that  makes  him  a  rebel  against 
the  law  of  his  country  ;  that  brings  the  deepest 
misery  upon  himself  and  through  him  upon 
his  people;  that  finally  drives  him  into  death. 
Here  still  more  clearly  than  in  The  Weav- 
ers we  have  a  tragic  character  that  reveals  to 
us  (to  use  Kohlhaas'  own  words)  "the  defec- 
tive order  of  this  world"  and  makes  us  long 
for  a  better  order. 

As  to  the  highest  form  of  tragic  character, 
Volkelt  finds  himself  in  accord  with  the  ac- 
cepted view  in  so  far  as  he,  too,  considers  the 
great  personality,  drawn  into  ruin  or  threat- 
ened by  ruin,  as  the  tragic  character  ko.t  i£o- 
Xtjv  ;   for  the  suffering  of  the  truly  great  man 


GERMAN   LITERARY  CRITICISM     179 

most  emphatically  forces  upon  us  the  riddle 
of  existence.  But  here  again  Volkelt  admits 
a  larger  variety  of  type  than  his  predeces- 
sors. In  particular,  he  refutes  the  common 
notion  that  tragic  greatness  is  confined  to  the 
strong,  the  aggressive,  the  indomitable;  and 
excludes  the  gentle,  the  contemplative,  the 
prevailingly  receptive  character.  The  tragic 
feeling,  the  feeling  of  contrast  between  the 
"is"  and  the  "ought"  is  aroused,  not  only 
by  witnessing  the  downfall  of  the  hero  of 
strenuous  will  and  of  action,  but  also  by  wit- 
nessing the  ruin  of  the  sensitive  thinker,  the 
passive  dreamer,  the  reveler  in  sentiment. 
Hamlet  is  a  tragic  character  of  the  highest 
type  in  spite  of  his  inactivity.  Werther's  fate 
has  the  quality  of  highest  tragedy;  for  this 
passive  dreamer  stands  for  the  imperishable 
right  of  feeling,  for  the  'priceless  worth  of  per- 
sonality, for  a  true  aristocracy  of  the  spirit, 
and  he  is  crushed  by  the  unthinking  and  un- 
feeling mediocrity  that  surrounds  him.  Even 
Byron's  Sardanapalus  belongs  to  this  class; 
for  his  inertia  and  voluptuousness  have  their 
roots  in  a  gentle,  humane  heart  which  would 
do  harm  to  none,  shed  no  blood,  wage  no  war, 
and  bring  happiness  and  enjoyment  to  every- 


180    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

body.  The  violent  downfall  of  such  a  man 
impresses  us  as  tragedy  of  the  highest  type. 

i.  We  have  seen,  then,  that  in  the  consid- 
eration of  tragic  greatness  Volkelt  is  led  by 
his  evolutionary  principles  to  a  freer  and  more 
comprehensive  view  than  was  attained  by  his 
predecessors.  The  same  is  true  of  his  con- 
sideration of  tragic  guilt.  The  Aristotelean 
theory  that  the  ruin  of  the  tragic  hero  must  be 
brought  about  by  some  sort  of  aberration  or 
mistake  or  crime  of  which  he  has  made  him- 
self guilty,  has  been  considered  unimpeachable 
throughout  the  centuries.  It  was  strongly  up- 
held by  Lessing ;  it  was  philosophically  reen- 
forced  and  deepened  by  Hegel  and  Vischer ; 
it  practically  rules  to-day ;  the  downfall  of 
the  hero,  this  is  still  the  opinion  of  most  critics, 
must  be  the  consequence  of  his  guilt  and  thus 
serve  as  an  atonement  for  his  guilt. 

Volkelt,  in  truly  inductive  manner,  dis- 
cusses in  the  first  place  a  number  of  cases  in 
which  this  theory  of  atonement  for  guilt  does 
not  seem  to  work.  Can  it  be  said  that  Eg- 
mont's  death  is  an  atonement  for  guilt?  Or 
is  it  not  simply  preposterous  to  think  that 
Egmont's  easy-going  temper,  his  neglect  of  the 
warnings  of  his  friends,  his  implicit  trust  in  men 


GERMAN    LITERARY   CRITICISM     181 

and  in  his  own  good  luck,  were  moral  aberra- 
tions which  could  be  rectified  only  by  his  death  ? 
What  is  it  that  causes  Gotz  von  Berliching- 
en's  ruin  ?  The  slight  moral  aberration  which 
induces  him  to  accept  the  leadership  of  the 
rebellious  peasants?  Or  is  it  not  rather  the 
world  of  meanness,  treachery,  trickery,  and 
corruption  which  presses  in  upon  this  honest, 
faithful,  and  doughty  knight,  blighting  his 
hopes  and  crushing  his  life  ?  Does  not  Sieg- 
fried, in  the  Nibelungenlied  as  well  as  in  Heb- 
bel's  drama,  although  the  external  cause  of 
his  death  lies  in  his  over-hasty  confidingness, 
fall  in  reality  as  an  innocent  victim  of  evil  pow- 
ers ?  Or  take  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Othello,  Lear-, 
those  critics  who,  like  Gervinus  and  Ulrici,  find 
in  these  dramas  nothing  but  examples  of  just 
retribution  following  upon  the  heels  of  reck- 
less love  and  over-reaching  egotism,  are,  indeed, 
to  be  compared  to  uncouth  savages  breaking 
into  the  flower-garden  of  poetry  in  order  to 
steal  some  cabbage-heads. 

It  is  clear,  then,  there  are  not  a  few  drama- 
tic masterpieces  in  which  the  ruin  of  the  hero 
is  not  caused  by  his  guilt.  In  other  words  the 
atonement  for  guilt  is  not  the  only  legitimate 
form  of  the  tragic  denouement ;  it  is  only  one 


1 82    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

type  of  tragic  structure  in  a  large  scale  of 
other  types.  But  it  should  at  once  be  added, 
that  it  is  the  highest,  the  most  complex  form 
of  tragic  structure.  For  guilt  both  intensifies 
and  softens  the  tragic  feeling,  it  both  intensi- 
fies and  softens  the  feeling  of  contrast  between 
the  actual  and  the  ideal.  It  intensifies  this 
feeling  because  guilt  is  the  deepest  of  all  woe. 
The  guilt  of  a  great  man  affects  us  still  more 
painfully  than  his  misfortune.  The  sight  of 
greatness  being  drawn  into  guilt  brings  before 
us  in  particularly  emphatic  manner  the  para- 
doxicalness  of  a  world  in  which  just  what  is 
best,  noblest,  strongest  is  most  easily  perverted 
into  evil,  impurity,  and  crime.  It  makes  us 
shudder  at  the  awful  possibilities  of  sin  and 
agony  that  lurk  in  the  recesses  of  the  human 
heart.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  tragic  guilt 
and  suffering  soften  the  feeling  of  contrast  be- 
tween the  actual  and  the  ideal.  For  the  suf- 
fering of  the  guilty  is  felt  as  a  necessity,  as  a 
moral  demand;  and  we  derive  even  an  aesthe- 
tic satisfaction  from  the  sight  of  the  moral 
equilibrium  being  restored  through  this  suffer- 
ing. 

3.  Closely  allied  with  the  question  of  tragic 
guilt  is  the  question,  what  is  the  essence  of 


GERMAN  LITERARY  CRITICISM     183 

the  tragic  catastrophe?  The  answer  to  this 
question  given  by  dogmatic  aesthetics  is  a  very 
simple  one  :  the  tragic  catastrophe,  by  show- 
ing the  hero,  though  outwardly  crushed,  yet 
inwardly  victorious  or  purified,  is  necessarily 
elevating  and  inspiring.  Here  again  we  ob- 
serve how,  in  contradistinction  from  the  dog- 
matic way  of  looking  at  things,  Volkelt's 
psychological  method  leads  to  evolutionary 
views.  Is  it  really  true,  he  asks,  that  the 
tragic  catastrophe  is  necessarily  elevating  and 
inspiring  ?  Is  there  nothing  legitimate  in  the 
tragic  catastrophe  of  the  depressing  variety  ? 

A  review  of  the  history  of  literature  shows 
that  the  depressing  type  of  the  tragic  catastro- 
phe is  by  no  means  uncommon.  It  is  found 
not  only  in  the  most  recent  literature,  not 
only  in  Tolstoi  or  Hauptmann.  Some  of  the 
greatest  masterpieces  of  the  past  are  prevail- 
ingly depressing.  The  catastrophe  of  the  Ni- 
belungenlied  dismisses  us  with  a  sense  of  name- 
less woe ;  the  whole  world  seems  here  to  be 
out  of  joint ;  the  noblest,  the  best,  the  brav- 
est go  under  in  a  universal  wreck;  the  guilty 
and  the  guiltless  are  crushed  by  the  same  in- 
exorable fate.  Othello,  a  man  of  colossal  pas- 
sion but  also  of  purest,  unadultered  feeling,  a 


1 84     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

man  both  hero  and  child,  is  robbed  by  a  con- 
summate villain  of  happiness  and  peace  ;  is  in- 
wardly deranged;  becomes  the  brutal  murderer 
of  his  loving  wife  ;  and  is  finally  driven  to 
suicide  —  a  career  so  shocking,  so  horrible,  so 
bewildering  to  our  moral  sense  that  it  seems 
preposterous  to  look  here  for  elevating  or 
inspiring  elements.  And  is  not  the  Elective 
Affinities,  probably  Goethe's  artistic  master- 
piece, in  its  moral  effect  essentially  depressing? 
Must  not  the  same  be  said  of  Hebbel's  Judith 
and  Mary  Magdalen,  the  same  of  most  of 
George  Eliot's  novels  ? 

Are  all  these  works  to  be  condemned  as 
illegitimate  productions  of  art  ?  Or  are  they, 
after  all,  valuable  as  bringing  out  one  side  at 
least  of  human  life?  It  seems  clear  that  the 
latter  is  the  case.  It  would  be  tantamount  to 
depriving  art  of  a  most  important  part  of  its 
office,  if  we  were  to  deny  it  the  right  of  arous- 
ing a  strong  feeling  of  the  nothingness,  the 
confusion,  the  grimness,  the  perversity,  the 
curse  of  all  earthly  existence.  It  would  be  a 
distortion  of  the  meaning  of  life,  it  would  be 
a  mere  palliation  of  facts,  if  art  were  to  exclude 
from  its  sphere  the  great  woe  of  our  being,  the 
triumph  of  the  mean  over  the  noble,  the  sink- 


GERMAN  LITERARY  CRITICISM     185 

ing  under  of  great  souls  in  shame,  hopeless- 
ness, and  despair.  Such  a  sight,  though  deeply 
depressing,  is  not  by  any  means  degrading. 
On  the  contrary,  it  enriches  our  inner  experi- 
ence ;  it  widens  our  sympathies  ;  it  puts  the 
soul  into  a  state  from  which  there  have  sprung 
some  of  the  finest  spiritual  truths,  the  state 
of  a  noble  contempt  of  the  world,  of  a  lofty 
resignation  to  the  eternal.  And  thus  the  de- 
pressing type  of  the  tragic  catastrophe,  in  a 
roundabout  way,  leads  to  the  same  goal  as  the 
inspiring  type,  the  goal  of  strengthening,  in- 
tensifying, and  deepening  the  inner  life.  That 
the  inspiring  type  is  aesthetically  higher,  Vol- 
kelt  does  not  deny.  The  highest  type  he  sees 
in  the  combination  of  both,  in  a  tragic  cata- 
strophe which  both  depresses  and  inspires, 
which  plunges  us  into  the  deepest  abyss  of 
human  woe,  yet  even  in  this  woe  gives  us  a 
triumphant  sense  of  human  greatness  and 
freedom. 

4.  This  leads  us,  finally,  to  the  considera- 
tion of  the  effect  which  tragedy  as  a  whole  has 
upon  the  mind  of  the  reader  or  spectator. 
Here  the  contrast  between  Volkelt's  evolu- 
tionary method  and  the  dogmatic  method  of 
older  aesthetics  is  particularly  marked,  because 


1 86     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

here  he  entirely  breaks  away  from  a  doctrine 
which  for  centuries  has  been  considered  as  the 
very  corner-stone  of  tragic  theory  :  the  Aris- 
totelean  doctrine  of  pity  and  fear.  With  most 
ajsthetical  writers  this  doctrine  of  pity  and  fear, 
as  the  fundamental  emotions  called  out  by  tra- 
gedy, still  enjoys  undisputed  sway.  Volkelt 
shows  that  this  is  a  formula  far  too  narrow  to 
do  justice  to  the  wealth  and  variety  of  tragic 
emotions. 

Pity,  in  particular,  is  a  most  unfortunate 
term,  if  it  is  to  stand  for  the  whole  scale  of 
sympathetic  feelings  aroused  by  tragic  suffer- 
ing. Let  us  suppose  :  the  suffering  hero  is  in 
all  his  agony  unshaken  ;  he  does  not  give  way 
to  despair  or  lamentation  ;  his  agony  serves 
only  to  set  off  his  greatness  of  soul  all  the 
more  strikingly.  In  the  face  of  such  a  suffer- 
ing we  do  not  feel  pity,  or  at  least,  pity  is  far 
outweighed  by  another  kind  of  sympathy. 
Our  sympathy  in  such  a  case  has  itself  some- 
thing of  the  courageous,  the  powerful ;  it  is 
not  so  much  sympathy  with  the  sufferer,  as 
admiration  for  the  way  in  which  he  suffers. 
For  the  Prometheus  of  iEschylus  or  Byron's 
Lucifer  we  feel  no  pity.  Or  let  us  suppose  : 
the  tragic  hero  is  drawn  into  vice  and  crime 


GERMAN    LITERARY  CRITICISM     187 

and  thus  becomes  a  caricature  of  his  better 
self.  For  such  a  man  we  certainly  feel  pity, 
but  this  pity  is  mixed  with  horror  and  repug- 
nance ;  and  frequently  these  latter  feelings 
gain  the  ascendency  over  pity.  When  we  see 
Macbeth  hardening  himself  in  bloody,  atro- 
cious crimes,  our  pity  with  him  is  overshad- 
owed by  feelings  which  keep  us  away  from 
him.  Pity  tends  to  unite  us  with  its  object; 
it  rests  on  the  instinctive  conception  of  an 
inner  affinity.  In  Macbeth's  case  the  opposite 
takes  place ;  we  feel  an  ever-widening  gulf 
stretching  out  between  him  and  ourselves ; 
and  in  the  end  pity  has  well-nigh  disappeared. 
These  examples  may  suffice  to  suggest  the 
way  in  which  Volkelt  demonstrates  the  inade- 
quacy of  the  Aristotelean,  or  rather  Lessingian, 
formula  of  tragic  emotions.  What,  then,  is  his 
own  formula?  He  has  no  formula,  he  admits 
the  whole  range  of  human  feelings,  both  pleas- 
urable and  painful,  depressing  and  inspiring, 
and  he  studies  the  scale  of  combinations  into 
which  these  pleasurable  and  painful  feelings 
may  enter  with  each  other.  That  there  should 
be  such  a  combination,  a  mixture  between  joy 
and  pain,  between  hope  and  gloom,  between 
light  and  dark,  —  this  seems  to  him  the  sine 


188     GERMAN    IDEALS   OF  TO-DAY 

quanon  of  tragic  effect;  and  the  highest  tragic 
effect  seems  to  him  reached  when  this  mixture 
is  most  harmonious  and  evenly  balanced.  "In 
that  case  the  tragic  effect  is  of  an  inexpres- 
sible charm;  willingly  Pain  opens  his  being  to 
Joy,  lets  her  take  away  his  sting,  and  feels 
tremblingly  her  gentle  touch;  and  Joy  on  her 
part  enters  into  the  union  with  Pain  bashfully 
and  hesitatingly,  as  if  fearing  to  disturb  his 
sacred  calm." 


We  have  followed  the  course  of  German  lit- 
erary criticism  through  a  number  of  important 
stages:  the  metaphysical,  the  sociologico-his- 
torical,  the  philological,  and  the  psychological. 
We  have  seen  that  in  all  these  stages  the  con- 
ception of  a  continuous  evolution  from  lower 
forms  of  literature  to  higher  ones  dominated 
the  critical  analysis.  We  have  seen  that  in 
every  one  of  these  stages  the  evolutionary 
method  led  to  some  new  aspect  of  literature, 
some  new  insight  into  the  relation  of  literature 
to  life.  It  is  perhaps  not  unfitting,  and  cer- 
tainly harmless,  to  conclude  this  essay  with  a 
prophecy.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  literary 
critic  of  the  future,  the  Messiah  toward  whom 


GERMAN  LITERARY  CRITICISM     189 

the  previous  history  of  criticism  is  pointing 
as  the  coming  fulfiller  of  its  mission,  will  be 
the  man  who  combines  in  himself  all  the  pre- 
ceding stages  of  critical  thought,  who  is  meta- 
physician, sociological  historian,  philologist, 
and  psychologist  in  one.  But  perhaps  this 
man  partakes  too  much  of  the  character  of 
the  Nietzschean  Uebermensch  to  have  much 
of  a  prospect  for  being  seen  in  the  flesh. 


IV 


THE  INNER   LIFE   IN  GERMAN 
SCULPTURE 


THE   INNER  LIFE   IN   GERMAN 
SCULPTURE 

It  is  due,  above  all,  to  the  munificence  of  the 
German  Emperor,  and  to  the  ready  response 
which  his  high-minded  initiative  has  found  with 
other  friends  of  German  culture  both  in  Amer- 
ica and  Europe,  that  the  Germanic  Museum 
of  Harvard  University  possesses  a  collection 
of  reproductions  of  monumental  works  of  Ger- 
man sculpture  such  as  exists  nowhere  else  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic  and,  for  that  matter, 
in  very  few  museums  abroad.  As  this  fact  is, 
I  believe,  not  very  widely  known,  it  may  be 
not  inopportune,  by  a  brief  review  of  at  least 
a  few  representative  specimens  of  this  remark- 
able collection,  to  bring  out  its  unusual  signifi- 
cance, and  at  the  same  time  to  throw  light  upon 
some  features  of  German  art  which  seem  to 
deserve  particular  attention. 

If  we  were  to  name  one  quality  which  more 
than  any  other  distinguishes  German  plastic 
work  from  that  of  other  nations,  we  probably 


194    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

should  not  go  astray  in  designating  it  as  in- 
tensity and  vigor  of  the  inner  life.  In  beauty 
of  form,  in  symmetry  of  proportions,  the  art 
of  other  nations,  particularly  the  French  and 
the  Italian,  has  equaled  and  not  infrequently 
surpassed  the  German  work.  In  spiritual  en- 
ergy, in  moral  earnestness,  in  veracity  of  feeling, 
in  depth  of  character,  German  sculpture  has 
had  few  equals  and  no  superiors.  Particularly 
is  this  true  of  those  epochs  which  in  the  Ger- 
manic Museum  are  most  fully  represented  — 
the  height  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  Renais- 
sance. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  mediaeval  Ger- 
man sculpture,  quite  as  much  as  mediaeval 
German  poetry,  has  received  important  sug- 
gestions and  formative  impulses  from  France. 
Just  as  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach's  Parzival, 
Gottfried  von  Strassburg's  Tristan,  and  Wal- 
ther  von  der  Vogelweide's  lyrics  would  have 
been  impossible  without  the  preceding  activity 
of  Chretien  de  Troyes,  Thomas  of  Brittany,  and 
the  Provencal  troubadours,  so  the  sculptures 
of  Freiberg,  Naumburg,  Bamberg,  Strassburg, 
would  not  be  what  they  are  without  the  in- 
fluence of  Chartres,  Rheims,  and  Amiens.  And 
vet  one  should  be  careful  not  to  overestimate 


INNER   LIFE    IN   SCULPTURE      195 

the  influence  of  French  models  upon  mediaeval 
German  sculpture.  From  the  very  beginning 
there  is  a  decided  note  of  individuality  in  the 
German  work  —  an  individuality  which  can 
hardly  be  accounted  for  except  by  taking  re- 
course to  fundamental  traits  of  national  tem- 
per. 

The  Frenchman,  as  a  rule,  seems  to  have 
little  difficulty  in  expressing  himself;  he  seems 
to  be  borne  along  by  a  popular  sentiment  in 
entire  accord  with  his  own  ideals  and  views  of 
life ;  he  easily  adapts  himself  to  the  general 
current;  he  is  naturally  graceful  and  communi- 
cative. The  German  is  naturally  self-centred 
and  unresponsive ;  he  often  finds  himself  in 
opposition  to  the  life  surrounding  him  ;  and 
the  more  he  has  to  say,  the  harder  is  it  for  him 
to  say  it.  He  struggles,  he  broods,  he  is  bur- 
dened with  his  task,  and  only  in  supreme  mo- 
ments of  concentrated  energy  does  he  pour 
out  his  whole  self.  Is  it  surprising  that,  with 
such  national  characteristics  as  these  to  start 
from,  German  sculpture  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
although  strongly  influenced  by  the  art  of 
France,  should  have  maintained  a  spirit  essen- 
tially different  from  that  of  French  sculpture? 
If  the  French  artist  appeals  to  us  chiefly  by 


196    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

his  mastery  of  form,  by  the  universality  of  his 
imagination,  by  the  refinement  of  his  manner, 
the  German  makes  his  appeal  chiefly  through 
the  energy  of  his  personality,  through  the 
sturdiness  of  his  purpose,  through  the  home- 
liness of  his  speech,  through  his  independence 
of  conventional  forms,  through  his  identify- 
ing himself  with  his  subject,  through  his  de- 
voutness  of  soul.  French  sculpture  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  therefore,  preserves  an  even  level 
of  formal  excellence  and  measured  grace.  Ger- 
man sculpture  moves  in  leaps  and  bounds; 
from  broad  naturalism  it  passes  over  to  fantas- 
tic mysticism  ;  for  the  most  part  it  is  extreme 
and  one-sided ;  in  rare  moments,  however,  it 
reaches  a  perfection  of  form  combining  the 
deepest  longings  of  the  heart  with  fullest  com- 
prehension of  the  visible  world. 

We  are  fortunate  in  having  at  least  one 
group  of  monuments,  showing  essential  char- 
acteristics of  German  art,  from  a  time  when 
German  sculpture  had  not  yet  been  affected 
by  French  influence  :  the  bronze  reliefs  of  the 
so-called  Bernward  Column  and  the  portal  of 
Hildesheim  Cathedral,  belonging  to  the  be- 
ginning of  the  eleventh  century.  In  these 
remarkable  sculptures  the  German  genius  for 


INNER   LIFE    IN    SCULPTURE      197 

homely  truthfulness  and  directness  of  charac- 
terization manifests  itself  with  a  truly  childlike 
simplicity.  Crudeness  is  the  most  palpable 
quality  of  this  art ;  but  it  is  a  crudeness 
thoroughly  wholesome  and  full  of  power,  and 
therefore  refusing  to  submit  to  conventional 
canons.  There  is  nothing  in  the  art  of  France 
of  the  eleventh  century  which  in  animation 
and  fullness  of  life  could  at  all  be  compared 
with  these  Hildesheim  monuments  ;  and  even 
the  best  French  works  of  the  beginning  of  the 
twelfth  century,  such  as  the  impressive  sculp- 
tures of  Vezelay  and  Autun,  show  a  far  stricter 
adherence  to  conventional  arrangement  of  dra- 
pery and  grouping,  a  far  closer  affinity  to  the 
severe  Byzantine  manner.  Nothing  could  ex- 
ceed the  plainness  of  speech  and  the  instinctive 
grasp  of  essentials  with  which  the  Hildesheim 
artist  tells  his  tale.  How  God  the  Father, after 
the  fall  of  man,  appears  in  the  Garden  of  Eden, 
calling  Adam  to  account,  Adam  on  his  part 
putting  the  blame  upon  Eve  ;  how  Cain  deals 
the  deadly  blow  to  his  brother  ;  how  the  Virgin 
receives  reverently  and  devoutly  the  blessed 
message  of  the  Angel  of  Annunciation  ;  how 
John  the  Baptist  sermonizes  to  the  bad  king 
and  the  evil  queen,  the   latter  sitting  in  her 


198     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

husband's  lap;  how  the  daughter  of  Herodias 
dances  at  the  king's  feast — all  this  is  told 
with  a  popular  homeliness  and  freedom  from 
restraint  which  betray  truly  indigenous  art.  It 
is  hardly  fanciful  to  say  that  in  these  Hildes- 
heim  monuments  we  have  a  worthy  counter- 
part to  the  simple  and  direct  manner  of  German 
religious  poetry  of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth 
centuries,  previous  to  the  introduction  of 
courtly  fashion  from  France. 

Most  of  the  German  plastic  work  from  the 
height  of  the  Middle  Ages  shows  distinct 
traces  of  this  courtly  manner.  In  the  pulpit 
and  the  crucifixion  group  of  Wechselburg,  in 
the  Golden  Gate  of  Freiberg,  in  the  founders' 
statues  and  the  rood-screen  of  Naumburg,  in 
the  sculptures  of  Bamberg  and  Strassburg,  this 
influence  is  clearly  discerned.  In  the  drapery, 
in  the  arrangement  of  the  hair,  in  facial  ex- 
pression, in  peculiarities  of  bearing  and  ges- 
ture, all  these  monuments  show  a  decided 
affinity  to  the  French  type,  a  clear  adaptation 
to  a  common  standard  of  decorum  and  chiv- 
alric  etiquette.  Yet  even  here  it  would  be  a 
mistake  to  think  of  the  German  work  merely 
as  a  copy  of  the  French.  Over  and  over  again 
the   German   individuality  asserts    itself  and 


INNER   LIFE    IN    SCULPTURE      199 

gives  to  these  creations  their  own  peculiar 
life. 

In  the  reliefs  of  the  pulpit  of  Wechselburg  ' 
—  Christ  as  Judge  of  the  World,  the  sacrifice 
of  Isaac,  and  the  healing  of  the  Jews  by  the 
brazen  serpent  —  it  seems  as  though  the  Ger- 
man artist  was  grappling  with  the  problem  of 
form.  In  the  majestic  figure  of  Christ  him- 
self, seated  on  his  throne,  surrounded  by  the 
symbols  of  the  Evangelists,  he  has  indeed  at- 
tained perfection  of  form,  classic  solemnity, 
exalted  repose.  In  the  more  animated  scenes 
of  the  sacrifice  of  Isaac  and  the  healing  of  the 
Jews,  there  is  a  curious  contrast  between  gran- 
deur and  awkwardness,  sweetness  of  feeling 
and  naive  naturalism.  Apparently,  here  is  an 
artist  who  looks  at  the  life  about  him  with  a 
keen,  penetrating,  and  receptive  eye,  but  who 
at  the  same  time  is  impelled  to  subject  reality 
to  certain  canons  of  measure  and  proportion 
which  he  has  not  yet  made  fully  his  own;  and 
perhaps  the  chief  charm  of  these  remarkable 
reliefs  springs  from  this  very  conflict  between 
inner  life  and  outer  form. 

Among  the  Bamberg  sculptures  of  the  thir- 

1  A  reproduction  of  this  pulpit  has  been  given  to  the 
Germanic  Museum  by  the  King  of  Saxony. 


200     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

teenth  century,  I  would  single  out,  as  illustrat- 
ing a  distinctively  German  quality  of  mind, 
two  statues  widely  differing  from  each  other 
in  attitude   and    temper:    the   serene,  saintly 
Empress  Kunigunde  and  the  stern,  portentous 
Sibyl  (or  Elizabeth,  as  she  is  perhaps  more 
correctly  to  be  called).    That  both  these  stat- 
ues had  their  prototypes  in  certain  figures  of 
Rheims  Cathedral  there  can  be  no  reasonable 
doubt;  but  it  seems  equally  certain  that  what 
imparts  the  fullness  of  life  to  these  figures  is 
something    not    borrowed    from    any  foreign 
model.    French  sculpture  of  the  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  centuries  has  produced  many  a  wo- 
man figure  of  greater  freedom  and  gracefulness 
of  movement  than  is  seen  in  Kunigunde,  the 
saintly  patroness  of  Bamberg  Cathedral ;  but 
I  doubt  whether  French  art  of  that  time  offers 
any  parallel  to  the  homely,  naive  gesture  of  the 
hand  with  which  this  German  woman  seems  to 
receive  the  blessing  of  heaven,  the  radiance  of 
which  is  surrounding  and  transfiguring   her. 
The  very  awkwardness   of  motion    becomes 
here  a  sign  of  spiritual  concentration  and  self- 
surrender.     As  to  Elizabeth,  we  are  justified 
in  finding  in  her  something  of  the  spirit  of 
Albrecht  Diirer.    The  general  outline  of  the 


INNER   LIFE    IN   SCULPTURE     201 

body,  the  majestic  drapery  with  its  regular  and 
rhythmic  folds  are  taken  from  French  models; 
but  all  that  gives  to  this  figure  its  strange,  un- 
canny fascination  —  the  long,  emaciated  fin- 
gers, the  sinewy  neck,  the  almost  masculine 
face,  the  thin  lips,  the  protruding  cheek-bones, 
the  small,  deep-cut,  penetrating  eyes  —  all  this 
is  the  artist's  own,  and  shows  in  him  the  same 
curious  mixture  of  mystic  brooding  and  natu- 
ralistic truthfulness  which  in  Durer  was  to  find 
its  fullest  artistic  embodiment. 

Of  the  Strassburg  monuments  belonging  to 
the  thirteenth  century,  the  Death  of  Mary  is 
perhaps  the  finest  example  of  French  form 
and  German  feeling  blended  with  each  other. 
That  the  general  arrangement  of  this  scene, 
the  grouping  of  the  Apostles  about  the  bed  of 
the  dying  Virgin,  as  well  as  the  treatment  of 
individual  figures,  were  suggested  to  the  Ger- 
man artist  by  French  representations  of  the 
same  subject;  that,  therefore,  the  singular 
beauty  of  this  wonderful  tympanum  is  pre- 
eminently a  tribute  to  the  artistic  imagination 
of  the  French  mind,  no  one  familiar  with  the 
sculptures  of  Senlis  or  Notre  Dame  de  Paris 
will  deny.  And  yet,  I  hardly  believe  that 
among  all  the  French  representations  of  the 


202     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

death  or  burial  of  Mary  there  is  one  which  be- 
trays the  same  depth  of  religious  sentiment  or 
the  same  variety  of  individual  emotion  as  does 
this  Strassburg  relief.  Indeed,  the  whole  his- 
tory of  sculpture  knows  of  few  creations  in 
which  the  fundamental  feelings  of  the  human 
heart  are  more  impressively  brought  out  than 
in  the  hushed  awe  and  grief  of  the  Apostles 
grouped  about  this  death  scene  and  the  truly 
majestic  equanimity  and  heroic  composure  of 
this  Virgin. 

The  climax,  however,  of  German  plastic  art 
of  the  Middle  Ages  is  to  be  found  in  the 
sculptures  of  the  choir  and  the  rood-screen  of 
Naumburg  Cathedral,  also  belonging  to  the 
thirteenth  century.  In  these  figures,  particu- 
larly the  twelve  portrait  statues  of  patrons 
and  benefactors  of  the  Naumburg  bishopric, 
the  intensity  of  the  inner  life,  of  which  I  spoke 
before  as  the  most  striking  characteristic  of 
mediaeval  German  art,  seems  to  have  found 
its  fullest  and  most  adequate  impersonation. 
Here  there  is  no  suggestion  of  labored  sub- 
mission to  a  conventional  standard;  here  there 
is  no  discrepancy  between  spirit  and  form ; 
here  there  is  complete  distinctness  and  vigor 
of  individual  life.    Every  one  of  these  figures 


INNER   LIFE    IN    SCULPTURE     203 

is  a  type  by  itself,  a  fully  rounded  personality. 
The  Canoness  standing  erect,  but  with  slightly 
inclined  head,  thoughtfully  gazing  upon  a  book 
which  she  supports  with  one  hand  while  the 
other  turns  over  its  leaves ;  the  two  pairs  of 
a  princely  husband  and  wife,  one  of  the  men 
full  of  power  and  determination,  the  other 
of  a  youthfully  sanguine  appearance,  one  of 
the  women  broadly  smiling,  the  other  with  a 
gesture  full  of  reserved  dignity  drawing  her 
garment  to  her  face ;  the  young  ecclesiastic, 
holding  the  missal  in  front  of  him,  with  his 
carefully  arranged  hair  flowing  from  his  ton- 
sure ;  the  various  knights,  one  looking  out 
from  behind  his  shield,  another  leaning  upon 
his  sword,  others  in  still  different  postures 
and  moods,  —  there  is  not  a  figure  among 
them  which  did  not  represent  a  particular  indi- 
vidual at  a  particular  moment,  and  which  did 
not,  without  losing  itself  in  capricious  imita- 
tion of  accidental  trifles,  reproduce  life  as  it  is. 
It  is  impossible  in  the  face  of  such  works  of 
sculpture  as  these  not  to  feel  that  they  pro- 
ceeded from  artists  deeply  versed  in  the  study 
of  human  character,  fully  alive  to  the  prob- 
lems of  human  conduct,  keenly  sensitive  to 
impressions  of  any  sort;  in  other  words  fully 


2o4    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

developed,  highly  organized,  complicated  in- 
dividuals. And  it  is  equally  impossible  not  to 
recognize  in  these  figures  types  of  German 
character,  a  race  sturdy  and  upright,  of  strong 
passions,  thoroughgoing  both  in  worldly  joys 
and  in  spiritual  cravings ;  a  race  to  whom  life 
is  a  serious  thing,  a  heavy  task,  a  mysterious 
riddle,  a  portentous  ideal.  If  we  had  nothing 
left  of  thirteenth-century  art  except  these  Naum- 
burg  sculptures,  they  alone  would  suffice  to 
refute  an  assumption  which  since  Jacob  Burck- 
hardt's  Kultur  der  Renaissance  in  It  alien  has 
been  repeated  over  and  over  again,  —  the  as- 
sumption, namely,  that  modern  individual- 
ism had  its  origin  in  the  era  of  the  rinascimento  ; 
they  show  conclusively  that  Burckhardt's 
phrase  of  "  the  discovery  of  the  individual  " 
by  the  great  Italians  of  the  quatrocento  is 
misleading,  that,  in  other  words,  the  Middle 
Ages  themselves  contain  the  germs  of  modern 
individualism. 

It  is  but  natural  that  the  Renaissance,  which 
brought  the  decisive  break  with  the  ecclesias- 
tical formulas,  which  freed  the  individual  from 
obsolete  creeds,  which  substituted  human  aspi- 
rations for  divine  authority,  should  have  given, 
in   German  sculpture,  a  new  impetus  to  the 


INNER    LIFE    IN   SCULPTURE     205 

native  German  tendency  for  unrestrained  and 
fearless  representation  of  the  inner  life.  Never 
has  German  sculpture  been  more  frankly  real- 
istic than  in  the  days  of  Adam  Kraft,  Peter 
Vischer,  Hans  Briiggemann,  and  Tilman  Rie- 
menschneider.  Never  has  it  brought  forth,  by 
the  side  of  much  that  is  cumbersome,  heavy, 
and  overcrowded  with  detail,  such  a  wealth 
and  variety  of  human  types.  Never  has  there 
been  a  more  striking  illustration  of  the  fact 
that  the  realistic  tendency  in  art  is  not  so  much 
the  outcome  of  a  desire  to  copy  the  outward 
forms  of  nature,  as  a  symptom  of  intense  inner 
activity  discharging  itself  in  forms  imbued 
with  the  freedom,  variety,  and  primitiveness 
of  nature  herself.  Only  two  of  the  foremost 
productions  of  German  realism  belonging  to 
the  Renaissance  may  briefly  be  considered 
here :  Adam  Kraft's  Entombment  of  the  Sa- 
viour and  Peter  Vischer's  Tomb  of  St.  Sebald. 
If  we  compare  Adam  Kraft's  Entombment 
of  Christ  with  the  Strassburg  Death  of  Mary 
mentioned  before,  we  find  in  it  less  refinement 
of  outline,  less  harmony  of  composition.  There 
is  a  certain  grossness  in  it,  an  apparently  will- 
ful emphasis  laid  on  the  ordinary  and  com- 
monplace.    But,  after  all,  this  ordinary   and 


206    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

commonplace  exterior  serves  only  to  make  us 
understand  all  the  more  fully  the  eternal  human 
emotions  throbbing  beneath  its  surface.  As  in 
Rembrandt's  paintings,  we  seem  to  have  the 
most  direct,  untrammeled  access  to  the  secrets 
of  the  heart.  The  speechless  woe  expressed 
by  Mary's  clutching  her  son's  head  and  draw- 
ing it  to  her  lips  with  frantic  ecstasy  calls  up 
before  us  the  deepest  tragedy  of  a  mother's 
life,  and  stirs  in  us  feelings  that  cannot  die. 
Peter  Vischer's  Tomb  of  St.  Sebald  is  almost 
bewildering  in  the  variety  of  its  forms.  It 
seems  as  though  the  artist  had  been  driven  to 
crowd  into  this  monument  his  whole  view  of 
the  universe.  The  dumb  creation,  the  elemen- 
tal forces  of  nature  and  history,  the  playful  and 
the  serious  moods  of  the  human  breast,  the 
great  heroic  figures  of  the  Christian  legend, 
and  the  workaday  scenes  and  types  of  common 
life,  —  all  this  is  made  to  surround  the  resting- 
place  of  the  saintly  man  whose  earthly  career 
has  been  run.  And  in  it  all,  what  an  abundance 
of  character,  what  a  firm  grasp  of  personality  — 
most  of  all,  perhaps,  in  the  figure  of  the  honest 
master  himself,  modestly  standing  in  a  niche 
at  the  back  of  the  monument,  his  tools  in  his 
hands,  the  leather  apron  hung  over  his  shoul- 


INNER   LIFE    IN   SCULPTURE     207 

ders,  the  very  embodiment  of  sturdy,  sincere, 
devoted  workmanship. 

That,  even  amid  the  artificiality  and  pom- 
pousness  of  the  baroque  period  and  of  pseudo- 
classicism,  German  sculpture,  in  a  few  of  its 
representatives  at  least,  preserved  its  native 
truthfulness  and  vigor  of  the  inner  life,  is 
proven  by  a  monument  which,  through  the 
grandeur  of  its  proportions  as  well  as  its  his- 
torical significance,  was  clearly  marked  out  for 
the  place  of  honor  which  it  holds  in  the  Ger- 
manic Museum:  Schliiter's  equestrian  statue 
of  the  Great  Elector  of  Brandenburg. 

Frederick  William,  the  founder  of  the  Prus- 
sian monarchy,  was  a  remarkable  mixture  of 
autocratic  arbitrariness  and  single-minded  de- 
votion to  the  common  weal.  Ruthlessly  over- 
riding time-honored  class  privileges  and  local 
statutes,  he  established  the  sovereignty  of  the 
modern  state  in  his  widely  scattered  territories, 
and  thus  welded  them  together  into  a  politi- 
cal whole.  Obstinately  adhering  to  a  military 
absolutism  even  in  matters  of  civil  adminis- 
tration, he  was  also  keenly  alive  to  the  de- 
mands of  industrial  progress  and  commercial 
expansion.  A  Prussian  from  foot  to  crown, 
zealously  maintaining  the  prerogatives  of  his 


208    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

principality  against  other  States  of  the  empire, 
he  was  also  the  only  German  prince  of  his 
time  who  deeply  felt  for  the  national  honor, 
the  only  one  willing  to  risk  his  own  State  in 
defense  of  Germany.  Could  the  sturdy  great- 
ness of  this  man,  could  the  innermost  secret 
of  his  personality,  be  more  concretely  and 
impressively  brought  before  us  than  by  this 
statue,  erected  in  front  of  his  castle  at  Berlin 
a  few  years  after  his  death?  Clad  in  the  cos- 
tume of  a  Roman  Imperator,  the  marshal's 
staff  in  his  right  hand,  with  the  left  tightly 
grasping  the  reins  and  holding  his  horse  in 
check,  his  head  slightly  thrown  back,  so  that 
the  aquiline  nose  and  the  commanding  eyes 
are  in  full  sight,  while  the  manelike  hair  flows 
in  bold  masses  over  neck  and  shoulders,  he 
seems  the  very  embodiment  of  seventeenth- 
century  absolutism.  But  there  is  nothing  vain- 
glorious in  this  man,  nothing  that  savors  of  a 
Charles  II  or  a  Louis  XV.  His  horse  is  not  a 
showy  thing  of  parade,  but  a  doughty  animal 
of  tough  sinews  and  heavy  limbs ;  he  rides  it 
free  and  without  stirrups  ;  he  knows  what  he 
is  about ;  he  is  carrying  his  destiny  in  himself; 
and  a  victorious  future  hovers  before  his  eyes. 
I  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  add  to  the 


INNER   LIFE   IN   SCULPTURE     209 

consideration  of  this  monument  a  reminiscence 
of  a  personal  nature.  In  March,  190a,  at  the 
time  when  Prince  Henry  of  Prussia  was  the 
guest  of  the  American  nation,  the  German 
Emperor  honored  Harvard  University  by 
inviting  me  to  an  audience  at  the  Royal  Castle 
in  Berlin.  During  this  interview  the  Emperor 
showed  his  guest  an  album  containing  views 
of  all  the  works  of  art  which  he  intended  to 
present  to  our  museum,  commenting  upon 
every  one  of  them  with  astonishing  minuteness 
of  knowledge  and  remarkable  precision  as  well 
as  breadth  of  judgment.  When  he  came  to 
the  statue  of  the  Great  Elector,  he  was  particu- 
larly emphatic  in  pointing  out  its  artistic  power 
and  fullness  of  life,  summing  up  his  observa- 
tions in  the  words :  "  If  that  man  stood  on 
the  Capitoline  Hill  at  Rome,  instead  of  the 
Lange  Briicke  at  Berlin,  the  whole  world  would 
be  at  his  feet." 

Modern  German  sculpture,  after  a  brief 
reign  of  a  refined  neo-classicism  during  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  has  pro- 
duced little  in  any  sense  worthy  of  its  great 
masters  of  the  past.  Particularly  the  decades 
following  the  Franco-German  war  have  been 
made  hideous  by  a  deluge  of  showy,  turgid, 


210    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

fantastic,  and  hollow  glorifications,  in  marble 
and  bronze,  of  national  prowess.  Fortunately, 
there  are  indications  that  another  turn  toward 
the  inner  life  has  set  in.  Even  Rodin,  the 
greatest  plastic  genius  of  our  time,  has  created 
nothing  which  in  weight  of  thought  and  con- 
centrated spiritual  energy  is  superior  to  Kling- 
er's  statue  of  Beethoven  ;  and  one  might  per- 
haps say  that  with  this  work  and  with  Rodin's 
"  Thinker "  the  plastic  art  of  Germany  and 
that  of  France  have  once  more  entered  the 
lists  as  rivals  worthy  of  each  other.  To  me, 
Klinger's  statue  has  even  more  to  say  than 
Rodin's.  The  latter,  so  to  speak,  takes  us  off 
our  feet  through  the  colossal  proportions  and 
the  grand  attitude  of  the  Titan  weighted  down 
and  inclined  forward  by  the  tremendous  burden 
of  his  brooding  thought.  In  Klinger's  Beet- 
hoven everything  is  concentrated  in  his  head 
and  hands.  The  contracted  and  protuberant 
forehead,  the  eyes  gazing  into  infinitude,  the 
lips  pressed  together,  the  fists  clinched  as  if 
held  by  an  invisible  spell  and  at  the  same 
time  moved  by  an  inner  rhythm,  —  all  this 
leads  us  straight  into  the  innermost  recesses 
of  this  man's  soul  and  draws  us  with  him  into 
the   realm   of  the   idea.     Whatever   we   may 


INNER   LIFE   IN   SCULPTURE     211 

think  of  the  by-play,  so  to  call  it,  of  this  statue : 
the  eagle  cowering  in  front  of  it,  the  over-rich 
detail  in  the  decorations  of  the  chair  on  which 
Beethoven  sits,  the  strange  device  of  represent- 
ing him  in  the  garment  of  an  Olympian  Zeus, 
—  the  criticism  of  these  things  is  disarmed 
by  that  head  and  those  hands ;  and  we  feel 
instinctively  that  here  a  new  type  of  art  has 
been  created. 


V 

THE   STUDY    OF    NATIONAL 
CULTURE 


THE    STUDY    OF    NATIONAL 
CULTURE1 

Last  spring  the  President  and  Fellows  of 
Harvard  College  took  a  step  which,  like  not 
a  few  steps  taken  under  President  Eliot's 
administration,  was  novel,  experimental,  and 
somewhat  venturesome :  they  established  a 
professorship  of  the  History  of  German  Cul- 
ture, the  first  professorship  of  this  subject  in 
an  American  or  English  university,  and  they 
intrusted  this  office  to  the  then  professor  of 
German  literature. 

Naturally  this  event  has  induced  a  renewed 
consideration  of  the  fundamental  question  in- 
volved in  this  matter,  the  question  :  What  is 
the  place  of  the  study  of  national  culture  within 
the  whole  of  historical  and  philological  studies; 
and  it  is  perhaps  fitting  that  some  reflections 
on  this  subject  should  be  presented  to  a  wider 
audience  of  persons  interested  in  higher  learn- 
ing. 

1  An  address  delivered  in  October,  1906,  before  the 
Graduate  School  of  Harvard  University. 


216    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

The  history  of  a  nation  may  be  studied  un- 
der two  main  heads  :  civilization  and  culture. 
When  we  speak  of  national  civilization,  we 
mean  thereby  all  that  contributes  to  shape  the 
outward  conditions  and  conduct  of  life  :  the 
modes  of  gaining  a  livelihood,  the  organization 
of  the  family,  the  forms  of  domestic  and  pub- 
lic custom,  social  gradations,  political,  legal, 
and  ecclesiastical  institutions,  and  the  friendly 
or  hostile  contact  with  other  nations.  When 
we  speak  of  national  culture,  we  mean  thereby 
all  that  contributes  to  shape  the  inner  life,  to 
enrich  the  world  of  feeling,  imagination,  and 
thought :  religious  and  philosophical  move- 
ments, tendencies  in  literature  and  art,  ideal 
aspirations,  intellectual  and  spiritual  revolu- 
tions. Civilization  makes  the  citizen,  culture 
makes  the  man ;  civilization  has  to  do  with  spe- 
cific conditions,  culture  has  to  do  with  values 
of  universal  application ;  civilization  is  the 
form,  culture  is  the  content  of  national  con- 
sciousness. But  neither  of  the  two  can  develop 
without  the  other ;  they  constantly  exert  a  re- 
ciprocal influence  on  each  other ;  and  only  he 
who  has  studied  comprehensively  both  the 
civilization  and  the  culture  of  a  given  nation, 
is  in  a  position  to  estimate  what  this  nation 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    217 

has  contributed  to  the  whole  of  the  world's 
history. 

I  shall  not,  in  the  following  remarks,  trav- 
erse the  whole  ground  indicated  by  these  ob- 
servations. What  I  wish  to  do  is  to  point 
out  how  the  study  of  the  spiritual  life,  the 
study  of  literature,  and  the  study  of  art  may 
be  benefited  by  considering  spiritual,  liter- 
ary, and  artistic  movements  as  parts  and  as 
kindred  manifestations  of  a  given  national 
culture. 

There  is  nothing  revolutionary  in  this  point 
of  view.  Since  the  days  of  Winckelmann, 
Wolf,  and  Boeckh,  students  of  classical  an- 
tiquity have  been  accustomed  to  look  at  Greek 
and  Roman  life  in  its  totality.  The  critical 
study  of  the  Homeric  poems,  the  history  of 
Greek  vase-painting,  the  history  of  the  Attic 
drama,  of  Attic  sculpture,  oratory,  and  phi- 
losophy, are  generally  recognized  to  be  no- 
thing but  chapters  in  a  comprehensive  history 
of  Greek  culture,  supplementing  and  illustrat- 
ing each  other ;  and  no  classical  philologist 
worthy  of  the  name  would  think  himself  com- 
petent to  write  even  a  single  paragraph  of  any 
one  of  these  chapters  without  having,  at  least 
cursorily,  gone  over  the  ground  of  all  the  rest. 


218    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

The  result  has  been  that  every  Greek  poem 
from  Homer  to  Theocritus,  every  Greek  statue 
from  the  Mycenaean  age  to  the  schools  of 
Rhodos  and  Pergamon,  every  conception  of 
Greek  philosophy  from  Anaxagoras  to  Ploti- 
nus,  nay,  every  construction  of  a  Greek  sen- 
tence and  every  fragment  of  a  Greek  inscription 
stands  to  us  as  an  epitome  of  a  particular  phase 
in  the  development  of  Greek  culture,  thus  re- 
vealing to  us  the  peculiar  conditions  of  life 
from  which  it  took  its  origin.  Nor  can  it  be 
said  that  this  alignment  of  individual  works 
of  literature,  art,  and  philosophy  into  the  his- 
torical sequence  of  national  development  has, 
in  this  case,  in  the  least  taken  away  from  the 
intrinsic  interest  of  these  works  themselves. 
On  the  contrary,  it  has  added  to  it  a  very 
important  element.  The  epya  koX  rjfjiepaL  of 
Hesiod  means  more  to  us  since  we  have  come 
to  see  in  it  the  expression  of  a  democratic 
reaction  against  the  aristocratic  society  of  the 
Homeric  times.  We  have  a  fuller  and  more 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  peculiarity  of  the 
art  of  Euripides,  since  he  has  come  to  be 
understood  as  a  dramatic  counterpart  to  the 
disintegrating  tendencies  of  the  rationalistic 
philosophy  of  his  time,  and   to  the  realistic 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    219 

analysis  of  human  passion  in  the  plastic  art 
of  Skopas.  And  how  much  more  has  the  Lao- 
coon  group  to  tell  to  us,  now  that  it  does  not 
any  longer  appear,  as  it  did  appear  to  the 
men  of  the  eighteenth  century,  as  a  timeless 
production  of  absolute  genius  revealing  the 
"  noble  simplicity  and  calm  grandeur "  (as 
Winckelmann  expressed  it)  of  Greek  charac- 
ter per  se,  but  has  come  to  be  recognized  as 
a  typical  production  of  that  period  of  Greek 
national  development  when  the  noble  sim- 
plicity and  calm  grandeur  of  the  iEschylean 
age  had  been  superseded  by  the  high-strung, 
nervously  excited  temper  of  Hellenistic  ro- 
manticism. 

The  point  which  I  wish  to  make  is  that  this 
conception  of  the  totality  of  a  given  national 
culture  has  not  as  yet  prevailed  sufficiently  to 
achieve  for  the  history  of  modern  nations  what 
it  has  achieved  for  the  history  of  Greece  and 
Rome. 

Not  as  though  there  had  not  been  distin- 
guished writers  treating  the  literary,  artistic,  and 
intellectual  history  of  modern  nations  from 
this  point  of  view.  Indeed,  there  are  not  a 
few  illustrious  examples  of  this  sort  of  applied 
national  psychology  both  with  regard  to  gen- 


220     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

eral  movements  and  to  individual  representa- 
tive men.    Among  Frenchmen,  the  one  name 
of  Hippolyte  Taine  stands  for  a  whole  class 
of  writers  trying  to  detect  national  character- 
istics in  literary  and  artistic  achievements.    In 
Germany,   such   men   as    Jacob    Burckhardt, 
Hermann  Hettner,  and  Karl  Lamprecht  have 
applied  this  method  both  to  particular  periods 
or  phases  of  intellectual  developments  and  to 
the  whole  history  of  a  given  people  in  all  its 
manifold  manifestations.    In  England,  John 
Addington  Symonds  and  William  Lecky  have 
created  masterpieces  of  research  in  the  history 
of  morals  and  spiritual  culture  in  mediaeval  and 
modern  Europe.    And  our  own  Barrett  Wen- 
dell has  attempted  to  build  upon  these  same 
foundations  a  Literary   History  of  America. 
As  to   biographies   of  epoch-making  men,  I 
point   only  to  a  few  works  of  signal   merit, 
works  which  give  us  as  it  were  the  spirit  of  a 
whole  age,  the  temper  of  a  whole  nation  con- 
densed in  one  central  figure  :  Sabatier's  Vie  de 
St.  Francois,  Grimm's  Michel  Angelo,  Villari's 
Girolamo    Savonarola  e  suoi   tempi ,    Morley's 
Rousseau,  Justi's  Velasquez  und  sein  Jabrbun- 
dert,  and  a  book  by  one  whom  we  may  also, 
although  unfortunately  only  for  a  few  months, 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    221 

t 

call  our  own  :  Eugen  Kuhnemann's  Schiller. 
In  all  these  works  the  great  task,  the  single 
aim  of  the  writers,  is  to  arrive  at  a  clear  and 
just  conception  of  what  the  culture  of  a  given 
age,  a  given  people,  a  given  personality  has 
stood  for,  what  ideals  of  life,  what  aspirations, 
passions,  imaginings,  forms  of  expression, 
modes  of  thought  it  included,  what  its  place 
is  in  the  general  trend  of  human  development, 
what  it  means  for  our  own  life. 

While,  then,  much  has  been  done  by  emi- 
nent writers  to  make  that  view  of  the  totality 
of  a  nation's  history  which  the  great  humanists 
of  the  early  nineteenth  century  applied  to  the 
study  of  Greece  and  Rome,  applicable  to  mod- 
ern nations  also,  it  yet  remains  true  that  the 
university  study  of  modern  literature,  art,  and 
intellectual  life  is  still,  on  the  whole,  domi- 
nated by  views  too  exclusive  to  lead  the  student 
from  the  very  start  into  the  wider  realm  of 
national  culture. 

I  am  certainly  very  far  from  decrying  the 
value  of  specialization.  I  fully  believe  that  a  stu- 
dent should  as  soon  as  possible  try  his  hand  at 
investigating  one  subject  thoroughly — whether 
it  be  certain  aspects  of  the  syntax  of  Berthold 
von  Regensburg,  or  the  representation  of  the 


222     GERMAN    IDEALS  OF  TO-DAY 

Annunciation  in  mediaeval  German  sculpture, 
or  the  influence  of  Bernard  of  Clairvaux  upon 
German  mystic  thought  of  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury, or  what  not.  But  I  do  think  that  as  uni- 
versity teachers  we  do  not  as  a  rule  see  suffi- 
ciently to  it  that  such  investigations  be  carried 
on  in  a  broad  spirit,  that  they  be  kept  from 
degenerating  into  mere  collections  of  gram- 
matical forms  or  catalogues  of  certain  plastic 
types  or  the  amassing  of  parallel  passages  of 
a  number  of  writers.  That  this  sort  of  thing 
is  the  average  work  done  in  doctor  disserta- 
tions dealing  with  this  class  of  subjects  there 
can  be  little  doubt.  Nor  can  it  be  denied,  it 
seems  to  me,  that  the  monographs  in  our  phil- 
ological, archaeological,  and  literary  quarterlies 
very  often  betray  a  deplorable  lack  of  histori- 
cal perspective,  that  there  is  something  barren 
and  unprofitable  about  this  huge  mill  of  ghiel- 
lenuntersuchungen,  of  tracings  of  literary  affilia- 
tions and  indebtednesses,  and  of  the  eternal 
quest  for  the  first  authenticated  appearance  of 
a  certain  literary  or  artistic  conceit.  The  well- 
nigh  exclusive  rule  of  this  method  in  our  uni- 
versity seminaries  has  limited  the  view,  stifled 
the  imagination,  and  brought  about  a  state  of 
mind  among  many  of  our  young  Ph.  D.'s  and 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    223 

candidates  for  the  Ph.  D.  according  to  which 
literature  and  art  seem  entirely  detached  from 
life  and  appear  as  nothing  but  a  huge  system 
of  automatic  contrivances.  And  the  principal 
business  of  the  literary  historian  and  art  critic 
has  come  to  be,  according  to  this  view,  to 
analyze  the  mechanism  of  these  contrivances 
and  to  establish  the  dates  when  their  inven- 
tors—  so  to  speak  —  had  them  officially  pa- 
tented. 

I  am  convinced  that  one  remedy  against 
this  soulless  and  lifeless  method  of  studying 
literature  and  art  is  to  hold  constantly  before 
one's  mind  the  connection  of  literature,  art, 
and  thought  with  the  general  trend  of  national 
development,  and  never  to  lose  sight  of  the 
fact  that  they  make  together  one  living  whole 
where  "  Alles  ist  Frucht  und  Alles  ist  Samen." 

Let  me  give  one  or  two  illustrations  of  the 
way  in  which  this  conception  of  the  interdepen- 
dence of  the  various  manifestations  of  national 
consciousness  may  be  made  fruitful  for  the 
study  of  each  of  them.  If  these  illustrations 
are  taken  exclusively  from  the  field  of  German 
studies,  there  will  be  seen  in  this  an  effect  upon 
myself  of  that  very  over-specialization,  the 
narrowing  influence  of  which  upon  others  I 


224     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

just  now  deplored  ;  and  I  would  take  this 
opportunity  to  say  that  throughout  all  my 
remarks  I  feel  myself  open  to  just  this  criti- 
cism, and  shall  have  nothing  to  reply  if  I  am 
to  be  confronted  with  a  "  Physician,  heal  thy- 
self!" 

My  first  illustration  is  concerned  with  a 
single  phenomenon  of  intellectual  life.  No 
one  could  make  even  a  perfunctory  study  of 
German  Romanticism  without  being  struck 
by  the  attention  bestowed  by  the  Romanticists 
upon  the  problem  of  insanity.  Indeed,  there 
is  hardly  a  phase  of  mental  derangement  which 
did  not  in  one  form  or  another  appear  in  Ro- 
mantic literature  and  art.  There  are  the  over- 
strained characters  of  Jean  Paul,  the  melan- 
choly, brooding  philosopher  Schoppe,  whom 
the  irreconcilable  contrasts  of  life,  the  unfath- 
omable abysses  of  existence,  deprive  of  his 
reason:  or  the  colossal  man  of  will  Roquairol, 
whose  boundless  ambition  leads  to  nothing 
but  inner  ruin  and  mental  wreck.  There  is 
the  gallery  of  eccentric  personalities  which 
form  so  large  a  part  of  Tieck's  literary  house- 
hold :  the  youthful  dreamer  of  the  Lovel  type 
who  is  unsettled  by  the  contact  with  the  world 
and  the  teachings  of  a  Pseudo-Fichtean  philo- 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    225 

sophy  ;  the  man  of  blind  instincts,  such  as  the 
Blonde  Eckbert,  who  lives,  as  it  were,  in  a 
world  of  chronic  hallucinations,  who  is  pursued 
by  constant  dread  of  monstrous  happenings,  to 
whom  life  is  a  terrible  burden  and  a  nightmare ; 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  ecstatic  enthusiast, 
such  as  the  old  painter-hermit  in  Franz  Stern- 
bald,  whose  gentle  madness  seems  to  have 
unsealed  to  him  the  beauty  and  harmony  of 
the  whole  universe.  There  is  the  somnam- 
bulism of  Kleist's  Kathchen  von  Heilbronn  ; 
the  irresponsible  libertinism  and  aimlessness 
of  the  vagrant  folk  in  Brentano's,  Eichen- 
dorff's,  and  Justinus  Kerner's  stories.  There 
is  the  ghastly  spook  of  Amadeus  Hoffmann's 
grotesque  imagination  with  its  criminal  mono- 
maniacs, its  haunted  houses,  doubles,  and 
enchanted  beasts,  and  with  its  Bedlam  of  cari- 
catures and  mentally  or  morally  deformed 
human  figures.  That  this  Romantic  interest 
in  the  abnormal  and  the  deranged  held  its 
sway  even  to  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  is  proved  by  the  popularity  of  the 
well-known  drawing  of  Kaulbach's,  represent- 
ing the  club-room  of  an  insane  asylum  with 
its  inmates  grouped  about  in  excited  conversa- 
tion or  in  silent  brooding,  each  of  them  bring- 


226     GERMAN   IDEALS   OF  TO-DAY 

ing  before  us  a  particular  type  of  madness  or 
aberration. 

Now,  in  studying  these  types  of  insanity  in 
German  Romanticism,  the  most  obvious,  least 
circuitous,  and  (let  me  add)  a  most  unalluringly 
safe  path  to  be  followed  is  that  of  the  familiar 
ghiellenuntersuchung.  What  types  of  insanity 
the  different  writers  or  artists  treat  by  prefer- 
ence;  how  these  different  writers  influence 
each  other  in  this  matter  ;  how  far,  for  example, 
the  insane  characters  in  Tieck  served  as  models 
for  those  in  Amadeus  Hoffmann  ;  who  was 
the  first  author  to  set  this  morbid  fashion ; 
what  foreign  influences,  if  any,  were  at  work 
in  it;  how  far,  for  example,  Tieck's  occupation 
with  Shakspere,  Ben  Jonson,  or  Cervantes' 
Don  Quixote  was  responsible  for  his  leaning 
toward  the  representation  of  eccentric  charac- 
ters,—  all  these  are  perfectly  pertinent  ques- 
tions ;  they  are  questions  which  it  is  well  to 
have  answered  before  one  proceeds  to  further 
investigations. 

But  let  no  one  who  has  answered  these 
questions  satisfactorily,  imagine  that  he  has 
thereby  contributed  much  toward  the  elucida- 
tion of  the  problem  of  insanity  in  German 
Romanticism.     What  he  has  done  is  in  the 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    227 

main  of  bibliographical  interest.  He  has  shown 
that  it  was  A,  and  not  B,  who  first  introduced 
this  subject  into  literature,  that  D  owes  much 
of  his  material  to  C,  that  E  has  a  greater  vari- 
ety of  types  than  F,  and  so  on.  The  question 
how  this  remarkable  and  widespread  interest 
of  the  Romanticists  in  the  phenomena  of  in- 
sanity is  connected  with  German  national  life 
of  that  time,  with  the  prevailing  currents  of 
thought  and  feeling,  in  a  word  what  place  it 
has  in  the  history  of  German  culture,  —  this 
question  he  has  hardly  touched. 

In  order  to  answer  this  question  intelli- 
gently, he  will  have  to  consider  the  Romantic 
movement  in  all  its  bearings  upon  the  emo- 
tional and  intellectual  life  of  that  age,  and  he 
will  try  to  detect  those  phases  of  this  move- 
ment which  would  naturally  have  had  a  par- 
ticular effect  upon  the  way  in  which  people 
would  look  upon  cases  of  insanity.  To  indi- 
cate only  a  few  lines  of  reasoning  which  such 
an  inquiry  would  open,  the  following  reflection 
would  be  likely  to  suggest  itself. 

The  Romantic  movement  is,  in  one  aspect 
at  least,  a  revolt  against  society  and  class  rule, 
an  outburst  of  individual  thought  and  passion, 
a  pronunciamento  of  the  individual  heart  and 


228     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

imagination  against  the  canons  of  convention, 
a  declaration  of  sympathy  with  everything 
that  is  something  by  itself,  and  that  lives  out 
its  own  laws  of  existence.  To  the  Romanticist 
—  and  I  include  here  under  this  name  that 
whole  galaxy  of  poets  and  thinkers  who  were 
under  the  direct  or  indirect  influence  of  Rous- 
seauic  ideals  of  life  —  to  the  Romanticist  there 
is  nothing  uninteresting  except  the  artificial. 
Everything,  whether  large  or  small,  beautiful 
or  ugly,  ordinary  or  exceptional,  strong  or 
weak,  healthy  or  diseased,  beneficial  or  destruc- 
tive, as  long  as  it  is  not  artificially  perverted 
and  estranged  from  its  own  nature,  is  worthy 
of  our  human  interest  and  sympathy;  and 
even  if  it  is  perverted  it  has  at  least  a  claim 
upon  our  pity  and  compassion.  The  individual 
is  sacred;  life  as  such  is  something  of  abso- 
lute value ;  and  every  one  of  its  varieties  has 
an  equal  right  to  try  its  wings. 

Is  it  not  clear  that  here  there  lie  the  sources 
of  those  humanitarian  views  in  criminology 
and  psychiatry  which  from  the  latter  part  of 
the  eighteenth  century  on  to  the  present  time, 
slowly  and  with  a  good  many  setbacks,  have 
nevertheless  steadily  been  pressing  on  toward 
wider  recognition  ?    The  criminal,  according  to 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    229 

Beccaria,  the  great  eighteenth-century  reformer 
of  criminal  law,  is  not  an  enemy  of  the  human 
race  against  whom  society  has  to  wage  a  relent- 
less war.  Much  truer  it  would  be  to  say  that 
he  is  a  victim  of  the  conditions  of  society  itself; 
and  that  the  prevention  of  crime  by  bettering 
these  conditions  is  a  matter  of  much  greater 
importance  than  the  punishment  of  the  crimi- 
nal. And  the  insane  man,  according  to  Pinel, 
Tuke,  and  other  eighteenth-century  reformers 
of  lunatic  institutions,  is  not,  as  former  ages 
considered  him,  a  miscreant,  possessed  by  evil 
spirits,  to  be  chained  and  chastised,  but  rather 
a  sufferer  from  disease,  worthy  of  our  most 
tender  attention  and  care.  And  both  the  crim- 
inal and  the  insane  are  to  the  popular  scientists 
of  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth,  favorite  subjects 
of  psychological  analysis  and  description. 

The  individualistic  and  humanitarian  ele- 
ment, then,  of  the  Romantic  movement  tended 
to  make  the  insane,  alongside  with  other  types 
of  human  states  of  mind,  a  topic  of  intense 
interest  for  the  writers  of  fiction  and  poetry; 
and  we  need  not  go  to  Shakspere's  Lear  or 
Ophelia  or  to  Cervantes'  Don  Quixote  to  ac- 
count for  the  frequency  of  deranged  characters 


230     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

in  Tieck's  novels  and  dramas.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  might  be  said  that  Tieck's  interest  in 
such  characters  as  the  Fool  in  King  Lear  or 
Don  Quixote  is,  in  part  at  least,  accounted  for 
by  the  Romantic  sympathy  with  the  unconven- 
tional and  the  wayward.  And  that  whole  class 
of  eccentric  personages  so  frequent  in  Romantic 
literature,  who  see  life  at  a  different  angle  from 
the  normal,  who  follow  their  own  whims  or 
illusions,  who  meander  through  the  world  as 
through  a  labyrinth  of  charming  surprises  and 
aimless  diversions,  may  be  called  a  collec- 
tive protest  against  the  humdrum  and  stupid 
matter-of-fact  existence  of  the  so-called  good 
citizen,  the  substantial  man  of  business,  the 
respectable  member  of  society.  The  illusion- 
ist is  the  Romantic  character  /car  e^o^V, — 
to  his  sensitive  nerves  there  are  revealed  de- 
lights of  life  which  remain  hidden  to  the  ob- 
tuse brain  of  the  muscular  healthy  ;  he  is  the 
personality  par  excellence,  unencumbered  by 
the  weight  of  the  material  world  which  burdens 
and  drags  down  the  anonymous  majority  ;  he 
moulds  freely  and  with  sovereign  playfulness 
his  own  world;  in  him  the  divine  irony,  of 
which  Friedrich  Schlegel  rhapsodized,  finds  its 
fullest  expression.    The  affinity  between  mad- 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    231 

ness  and  genius  is  a  discovery  which  we  owe 
to  Romanticism. 

This  is  one  side  of  the  subject.  But  Ro- 
manticism was  not  only  an  individualistic  pro- 
test against  society.  It  was  also  what  at  first 
sight  may  seem  the  very  opposite  of  this  in- 
dividualism, and  yet  is  after  all  only  a  natural 
sequence  of  it :  it  was  a  proclamation  of  the 
universe  as  one  organic  living  whole.  And  this 
side  of  the  Romantic  movement  also  is  closely 
connected  with  the  interest  taken  by  Romantic 
poets  and  novelists  in  the  problem  of  insanity. 
The  infinite  is  the  true  home  of  the  Roman- 
ticists. Novalis  defines  philosophy  as  home- 
sickness,—  homesickness  for  the  absolute.  To 
Schelling  beauty  is  the  infinite  represented  in 
finite  form.  Tieck's  whole  life  was  an  infinite 
longing  for  something  beyond  and  above.  All 
Romantic  landscape  paintings  have  that  fasci- 
nating quality  of  the  hazy  blue  distance  which 
beckons  on  and  on  to  endless  space.  Never, 
perhaps,  has  there  been  a  time  when  the  world, 
to  the  chosen  few  at  least,  seemed  so  literally 
alive  with  infinite  power  as  it  seemed  to  these 
men.  To  them  there  was  no  dividing  line  be- 
tween rock,  plant,  beast,  and  man.  A  mysteri- 
ous bond  of  magnetic  attraction,  they  believed, 


232     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

unites  stars  and  human  brains,  the  organic  and 
the  inorganic,  the  conscious  and  the  uncon- 
scious. The  world  of  the  senses  was  to  them 
only  a  symbol  of  a  spiritual  presence  hovering 
within  and  above  us.  All  nature  they  con- 
ceived as  one  indivisible  being,  incessantly 
striving  to  manifest  itself,  and  to  become  fully 
conscious  of  its  own  spirit. 

Now  it  is  clear  that  such  views  as  these, 
very  imperfectly  stated  by  me,  but  of  para- 
mount, fundamental  importance  to  the  Ro- 
manticists —  it  is  clear,  I  say,  that  such  views 
as  these  of  the  essential  unity  of  all  life,  of  the 
identity  of  matter  and  spirit,  of  the  absorption 
of  the  individual  in  the  great  mysterious  All, 
are  not  fully  accessible  to  the  sober  intellect, 
that  they  require  for  their  receptacle  a  vision- 
ary state  of  mind,  an  imagination  pitched  to 
its  highest  key,  a  soul  that  is  itself  in  instinc- 
tive contact  with  the  invisible  powers.  The 
Romantic  individual,  in  his  highest  perfection, 
is  the  inspired  mystic,  the  ecstatic  seer,  who  is 
his  own  law,  and  who  harbors  within  himself 
the  riddle  of  the  universe.  Is  it  necessary  to 
say  that  here  again  we  have  arrived  in  a  sphere 
where  it  is  hard  to  draw  the  line  between  in- 
spiration and  madness? 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    233 

Here,  then,  there  is  seen  the  connection 
between  the  intellectual  drift  of  the  age  and 
the  second  important  class  of  types  of  men- 
tally deranged  in  Romantic  poetry  and  fiction  : 
the  seekers  for  the  infinite.  A  great  many  dif- 
ferent varieties  of  extravagant  fancy  and  mor- 
bid desires  may  be  traced  back  to  this  common 
type.  It  appears  as  the  craving  for  solitude 
and  passive  contemplation  ;  as  the  reveling  in 
the  mystery  of  night  or  in  the  wonders  of  a 
cavernous,  subterranean  existence  ;  as  the  glo- 
rification of  the  irrational  and  the  incoherent. 
It  assumes  the  form  of  a  naive  dreaming  one's 
self  back  into  a  fantastic  golden  age,  or  of 
plunging  into  a  state  of  trancelike  transfigu- 
ration, or  of  a  return  to  a  serene,  placid  un- 
consciousness. Or  again,  we  see  it  represented 
in  characters  wrestling  with  themselves,  and 
seeking  forgetfulness,  intoxication,  commu- 
nion with  the  universe  either  in  mesmeristic 
and  spiritualistic  pseudo-science,  or  in  sensual 
dissipation  and  revelry,  or  in  suicide. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  all  these 
various  types  of  mental  derangement  so  fre- 
quent in  Romantic  literature  find  their  coun- 
terpart in  the  lives  of  the  Romantic  writers 
themselves.     The    tragic    fate    of   Holderlin, 


234     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

Heinrich  von  Kleist,  Lenau,  the  erratic  career 
of  Brentano  and  Amadeus  Hoffmann,  are  typ- 
ical illustrations  of  the  correctness  of  Goethe's 
dictum,  "The  Classic  is  the  healthy,  the  Ro- 
mantic is  the  diseased."  In  our  own  time, 
the  fate  of  Poe,  of  Nietzsche,  and  of  Oscar 
Wilde  has  furnished  a  new  proof  for  this 
homely  truth.  Every  broad-minded  man, 
however,  while  fully  recognizing  this  truth, 
will  acknowledge  that  even  these  excesses  of 
Romantic  imagination  have  enlarged  the  vision, 
broadened  sympathies,  and  heightened  the  in- 
terest of  life,  and  have  thus  added  priceless 
treasures  to  the  store  of  spiritual  possessions. 

So  much  for  the  way  in  which  a  single  lit- 
erary phenomenon  may  (or  is  it  not  better  to 
say,  should)  be  studied  as  an  expression  of 
the  whole  culture  of  a  given  period  in  the 
national  development.  Let  us  now  for  a  mo- 
ment turn  to  the  question,  how  a  number 
of  different  phenomena  of  literature,  art,  and 
thought  may  be  studied  under  the  common 
head  of  the  development  of  national  culture. 
Here  again,  I  content  myself,  in  place  of  the- 
oretical discussions,  with  giving  one  concrete 
illustration. 

Historians  of  German  literature  are  wont  to 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    235 

draw  a  sharp  contrast  between  the  high  refine- 
ment both  of  sentiment  and  form  which  is 
characteristic  of  the  classic  epoch  of  chivalric 
poetry  at  the  turning-point  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury to  the  thirteenth,  and  the  decay  of  good 
taste  setting  in  toward  the  middle  of  the  thir- 
teenth century.  And  it  must  be  admitted  that 
in  imaginative  literature  the  whole  period  from 
1250  to  1500,  that  is,  from  the  decline  of 
chivalric  poetry  to  the  Humanistic  movement, 
offers  nothing  that  could  at  all  be  compared 
with  the  grandeur  of  the  Nibelungenlied  or 
the  charm  of  Gottfried  von  Strassburg  or 
Walther  von  der  Vogelweide.  From  the  ex- 
clusively literary  point  of  view,  the  thirteenth, 
fourteenth,  and  fifteenth  centuries,  with  their 
cumbersome  romances,  their  unwieldy  didactic 
encyclopaedias,  their  gross  satire,  and  their 
over-realistic  and  over-spectacular  religious 
drama,  appear  indeed  as  an  epoch  of  disinte- 
gration and  decay. 

As  soon,  however,  as  we  discard  this  exclu- 
sively literary  point  of  view,  as  soon  as  we 
survey  the  whole  ground  of  higher  national 
activities  and  try  to  detect  those  achievements 
in  which  the  creative  power  of  the  nation  at  a 
given  time  found  its  fullest  expression,  these 


236     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

same   centuries   assume    a   very   different  as- 
pect. 

If,  instead  of  following  out  in  their  weari- 
some and  artificial  detail  the  offshoots  and 
outspurs  of  chivalric  epics  and  lyrics  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  we  visit  the  cathedrals  of 
Naumburg,  of  Bamberg,  of  Strassburg,  of  Frei- 
burg, and  look  at  the  reliefs  and  statues  adorn- 
ing their  portals,  choirs,  and  rood-screens,  we 
become  aware  of  the  fact  that  the  classic  epoch 
of  Middle  High  German  poetry  from  the  end 
of  the  twelfth  and  the  beginning  of  the  thir- 
teenth century  was  followed  in  the  greater  part 
of  the  thirteenth  century  and  the  beginning  of 
the  fourteenth  by  an  equally  classic  epoch  of 
German  sculpture.  And  if  we  study  these 
plastic  monuments  from  the  point  of  view  of 
national  culture,  if  we  compare  them  with  the 
great  figures  of  chivalric  poetry,  we  find  that, 
although  sculpture  and  poetry  differed  from 
each  other  in  subject-matter,  the  spirit  of  these 
two  epochs  of  classic  German  art  was  essen- 
tially the  same.  The  same  refinement  and 
measure  ;  the  same  insistence  on  courteous 
decorum  ;  the  same  curious  combination  of 
scrupulous  attention  to  certain  conventional 
forms  of  dress,  gesture,  and  expression,  on  the 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    237 

one  hand,  and  a  free  sweep  in  the  delineation 
of  character,  on  the  other ;  the  same  moral 
earnestness  and  the  same  fanciful  vagueness  ; 
in  short,  the  same  happy  union  of  the  univer- 
sally human  with  the  distinctively  mediaeval 
which  is  found  in  such  characters  as  Parzival, 
Tristan,  or  Kudrun,  comes  to  light  in  the 
Founders'  Statues  of  Naumburg,  the  so-called 
Konrad  of  the  Cathedral  of  Bamberg,  or  the 
Ecclesia  and  Synagogaof  Strassburg  Cathedral. 
Very  far,  then,  from  seeing  in  the  thirteenth 
century  a  period  of  artistic  decline,  we  simply 
observe  in  it  a  shifting  of  the  forms  through 
which  the  artistic  energy  of  the  nation  revealed 
itself;  we  receive  from  it  a  new  impression, 
from  a  different  angle,  of  that  rounding  out 
of  the  personality,  that  heightening  of  human 
existence,  which  was  one  of  the  great  effects  of 
the  supreme  sway  of  chivalry  and  of  the  medi- 
aeval Church.  As  the  art  of  Phidias  and  Prax- 
iteles is  an  indispensable  supplement  to  the 
art  of  vEschylusand  Sophocles  for  our  under- 
standing of  Attic  culture  in  its  prime,  so  these 
works  of  German  sculpture  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  in  their  wonderful  blending  of  the 
ideal  human  type  with  the  characteristic  fea- 
tures of  the  portrait,  stand  to  us,  by  the  side  of 


238     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

the  great  creations  of  the  chivalric  poets,  as 
incontrovertible  proofs  of  the  free  and  noble 
conception  of  humanity  reached  by  mediaeval 
culture  at  its  height.  Perhaps  I  may  be  per- 
mitted to  say  that  it  was  considerations  such 
as  these  which  some  years  ago  led  to  the  es- 
tablishment of  our  Germanic  Museum  as  a 
place  where  these  impressive  plastic  types 
of  national  imagination  and  feeling  might  be 
brought  before  the  student's  eye  in  their  his- 
torical sequence,  and  with  as  much  of  com- 
pleteness as  possible. 

Similar  observations  might  be  made  about 
the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries.  The 
fourteenth  century,  so  barren  and  uninspiring 
if  we  measure  it  by  the  standard  of  polite  liter- 
ature, becomes  of  absorbing  interest  and  deep- 
est significance,  if  we  study  it  as  the  great  epoch 
of  German  mysticism,  if  we  enter  into  that 
marvelously  intense  inner  life,  the  world  of 
visions,  dreams,  hallucinations,  and  the  pure 
regions  of  exalted  self-abnegation  and  self-per- 
fection which  mark  the  age  of  Eckart,  Suso, 
and  Tauler  as  the  first  irresistible  outburst 
of  modern  individualism.  And  as  to  the  fif- 
teenth century,  can  there  be  any  doubt  that  it 
was  neither  literature  nor  sculpture  nor  mystic 


STUDY  OF  NATIONAL  CULTURE    239 

speculation,  but  religious  painting  which  con- 
centrated upon  itself  the  creative  energy  of 
that  age  ?  So  that  he  who  would  understand 
this  century  and  its  relation  to  the  preceding 
epochs  should  first  of  all  study  the  great  re- 
presentatives of  the  pictorial  art,  from  the  Van 
Eycks  and  the  Cologne  masters  to  Memlinc 
and  Albrecht  Diirer.  And  in  doing  so,  he  will 
recognize  Diirer  and  his  compeers  as  the  direct 
descendants  of  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach  and 
Walther  von  der  Vogelweide,  the  masters  of 
the  Bamberg  or  Strassburg  sculptures,  and 
Eckart  and  Suso  and  the  other  mystics  of  the 
fourteenth  century ;  in  other  words,  by  this 
very  passing  from  one  sphere  of  national  activ- 
ities to  another  he  will  come  to  understand 
fully  the  continuity  of  the  development  of 
national  culture  as  a  whole. 

I  am  done.  Only  one  word  in  conclusion. 
We  are  witnessing  at  present  in  a  number 
of  our  universities,  notably  at  Columbia  and 
at  Harvard,  a  remarkable  strengthening  and 
rounding  out  of  the  departments  of  Compar- 
ative Literature.  The  comparative  study  of 
national  literatures  cannot  fail  to  be  a  most 
powerful  help  in  determining  what  is  original, 
what  is  of  abiding  and  universal  importance  in 


24o     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

the  artistic  contributions  of  the  various  peo- 
ples to  the  common  stock  of  spiritual  life. 
And  so,  as  a  student  of  the  history  of  national 
culture,  I  offer  to  these  young  and  most  pro- 
mising departments  of  international  research  a 
cordial  and  expectant  welcome. 


VI 


SKETCHES  OF  CONTEMPORARY 
GERMAN  LETTERS 


SKETCHES  OF  CONTEMPORARY 
GERMAN   LETTERS1 

I.    GERHART     HAUPTMANn's     FUHRMANN     HEN- 
SCHEL   (DECEMBER,  I  898) 

After  the  appearance  of  Gerhart  Haupt- 
mann's  Die  Versunkene  Glocke,  not  a  few  of 
his  admirers  thought  that  this  drama  would 
mark  a  turning-point  in  the  poet's  develop- 
ment, that  he  had  at  last  struggled  through 
the  gloom  of  his  early  imaginings,  that  from 
now  on  he  would  accentuate  the  joyous,  the 
harmonious  notes  of  human  life.  This  hope 
has  been  cruelly  disappointed  by  his  latest 
production,  Fuhrmann  Henscbe/,  a  dialect 
tragedy  which  has  been  the  doleful  piece  de 
resistance  of  the  Deutsches  Theater  of  Berlin 
during  the  last  few  weeks.    Nothing  could  be 

1  The  following  sketches,  being  impressions  of  the  mo- 
ment and  having  been  written,  in  part  at  least,  as  letters 
from  abroad,  are  here  reprinted  in  the  chronological  order 
in  which  they  first  appeared  ;  and  no  attempt  has  been 
made  to  efface  discrepancies  between  them,  due  to  the  dif- 
ferent mood  of  different  moments. 


244     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

gloomier  and  more  depressing  than  this 
mournful  picture  of  Silesian  peasant  life. 
Even  Tolstoi's  The  Power  of  Darkness,  which 
undoubtedly  suggested  the  outline  of  char- 
acters and  the  general  trend  of  action  in 
Hauptmann's  drama,  is,  in  its  final  effect, 
less  oppressive  and  saddening ;  for  although 
it  presents  to  us  a  succession  of  the  most  hor- 
rible atrocities,  it  leads  in  the  end  to  a  genuine 
delivery  of  soul,  to  a  spiritual  purification 
such  as  we  experience  in  all  truly  great  works 
of  art.  In  Hauptmann's  Fuhrmann  Henschel, 
on  the  other  hand,  there  is  much  less  of 
outward  offense  against  the  laws  of  society, 
much  less  of  violation  of  the  accepted  code 
of  morality  ;  and  yet  we  seem  to  sink  resist- 
lessly  and  irretrievably  into  utter  degradation 
and  ruin. 

The  plot  as  well  as  the  characters  of  the 
drama  are  of  the  simplest.  Henschel,  a  team- 
ster in  a  Silesian  mountain  village,  has  hitherto 
been  leading  a  humdrum  and  uneventful 
married  existence.  Both  he  and  his  wife  have 
passed  middle  life  when  the  first  child  is  born. 
As  a  consequence  of  childbed  the  mother  falls 
into  a  lingering  illness  from  which  she  does 
not  recover.     Shortly   before    her   death,  she 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS        245 

exacts  from  her  husband  a  promise  that  he 
will  not  marry  their  servant-girl,  whose  ambi- 
tious schemes  upon  the  unsuspecting  man  she 
has  discerned  with  the  mental  clear-sightedness 
that  comes  from  bodily  weakness.  This  is  the 
end  of  the  first  act.  In  the  second  act  we  see 
the  helpless  widower,  struggling  along  in  his 
loneliness  and  isolation,  seeking  comfort  in 
idealizing  the  memories  of  the  past,  but  at 
the  same  time  unconsciously  breaking  away 
from  them  ;  constantly  holding  before  himself 
the  promise  that  he  made  to  his  dying  wife, 
yet  by  this  constant  ruminating  over  it  weak- 
ening his  sense  of  moral  obligation  to  it,  and 
thus  gradually  drifting  into  a  second  marriage. 
In  the  third  act,  Hanna,  the  servant-girl, 
has  attained  her  purpose  :  she  has  become  the 
mistress  of  the  house  ;  and  now  she  reveals 
her  true  character.  She  treats  her  husband 
with  brutal  scornfulness ;  she  lets  the  child  of 
the  first  marriage  die  from  sheer  neglect ;  she 
dismisses  an  old  and  trusted  manservant ;  she 
flirts  with  all  sorts  of  doubtful  characters ; 
she  ill  disguises  her  wrath  and  disgust  when 
the  good-natured  husband,  thinking  to  please 
her  thereby,  adopts  the  offspring  of  a  former 
liaison  of  hers  whom  she  had  left  to  misery 


246     GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

and  starvation.  The  fourth  act  brings  the  be- 
ginning of  the  catastrophe.  Thus  far  Henschel 
has  borne  all  the  contumely  and  shame  in- 
flicted upon  him  by  his  second  wife  with  mute 
resignation.  He  seems  to  live  on  in  a  sort 
of  dazed  half-wakefulness,  apparently  unmind- 
ful of  the  scorn  and  disrepute  into  which  he 
has  fallen  in  the  village  community.  But  now 
a  chance  word  rouses  him  to  sudden  con- 
sciousness of  his  condition.  Being  involved, 
one  evening,  in  a  quarrel  at  the  tavern,  he 
hears  the  insinuation  that  his  second  wife  is 
leading  him  by  the  nose,  nay,  that  she  was 
not  without  responsibility  for  the  death  of  his 
first  wife  and  child.  Now  his  long-repressed 
despair  breaks  forth  with  boundless  fury. 
Like  a  maniac  he  rages  about,  he  strikes  down 
whoever  comes  in  his  way,  he  has  his  wife 
brought  to  the  tavern  to  confront  her  with 
her  accuser ;  and,  when  she  haughtily  defies 
them  all,  he  sinks  down  utterly  prostrated. 

From  here  on,  throughout  the  fifth  act,  he 
appears  well-nigh  out  of  his  mind.  Only  one 
idea  is  ever  present  with  him,  one  fact  stands 
out  before  him  with  terrible  distinctness  :  the 
violation  of  the  promise  given  to  his  dying 
wife.    This,  he  thinks,  is  the  cause  of  all  his 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS        247 

troubles,  for  it  has  prevented  his  wife  from 
finding  rest  in  the  grave.  Wherever  he  goes 
he  sees  her  face.  She  looks  at  him,  sad  and 
pale,  from  out  of  the  moon.  She  stands  by 
his  side  when  he  is  grooming  the.  horses.  She 
walks  about  in  the  house,  rearranging  the  fur- 
niture. When  he  is  going  to  sleep  at  night, 
he  finds  her  lying  in  his  bed;  and  she  presses 
her  hand  upon  his  breast  and  chokes  him.  At 
one  time  it  seems  as  though  he  reveled  in 
taking  the  whole  responsibility  of  his  mis- 
fortune upon  himself:  he  finds  no  fault  with 
his  second  wife ;  he  retracts  whatever  he  said 
against  her.  But  then,  again,  he  gives  way  to 
fatalistic  ravings,  with  genuine  peasant  super- 
stitiousness  throwing  the  whole  blame  upon 
the  baneful  chain  of  circumstances. 

"  Yes,  yes ;  I  am  at  fault  in  it  all,  I  know  it, 
I  am  at  fault;  have  done  with  it.  But  before 
that  happened  with  my  wife,  I  mean  before  I 
took  Hanna,  it  had  begun  already,  and  slowly, 
slowly  it  went  down-hill  with  me.  First  my 
whalebone  whip  broke  in  two.  Next,  I  re- 
member it  plainly,  I  drove  a  wagon  over  my 
dog  ;  it  was  the  best  Spitz  I  had.  Then,  three 
of  my  horses  fell  dead,  one  right  after  another; 
and  one  was  a  stallion,  too,  worth  three  hun- 


248    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

dred  thalers.  Then,  at  last,  my  wife  died.  I 
knew  well  enough  that  I  had  been  marked  out 
for  all  this.  But  when  my  wife  died,  I  first 
thought  it  had  come  to  an  end.  Now  he  can't 
take  much  more  from  me,  I  thought.  But  now, 
you  see,  he  has  managed  to  do  me  still  an- 
other turn." 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  what  the  result  of  all 
these  mad  hallucinations  is  ;  a  man  of  such 
hopelessly  hypochondriac  temper  cannot  live, 
and  we  are  glad  for  him  when  he  has  ended  it  all. 

Hauptmann's  consummate  skill  in  depict- 
ing diseased  states  of  mind  has  perhaps  never 
been  as  strikingly  illustrated  as  in  this  pathetic 
figure  of  a  man  who  goes  to  ruin  from  sheer 
mental  disintegration.  But  never,  too,  has 
there  been  a  more  striking  illustration  of  the 
inevitable  failure  of  exclusively  pathological 
poetry.  The  whole  drama,  to  speak  plainly, 
is  as  intolerable  as  it  is  perfect.  There  is  not 
a  glimpse  of  the  higher  life  in  it ;  not  a  single 
figure  which  calls  out  our  affection  ;  not  even 
an  appeal  to  our  sense  of  indignation  or  our 
righteous  wrath  ;  nothing  but  the  cold  analysis 
of  a  scientific  observer.  And  that  from  the 
author  of  Die  Weber  ^  Einsame  Menschen,  and 
Die  Versunkene  Gloke  !    Indeed,  the  extraordi- 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS        249 

nary  wealth  and  versatility  of  Hauptmann's 
genius  could  not  be  more  graphically  brought  to 
our  minds  than  by  placing  Fuhrmann  Henschel 
side  by  side  with  the  three  dramas  just  men- 
tioned. And  herein  lies  the  ground  for  the 
hope  that  his  next  drama  will  again  be  a  sur- 
prise, and  lead  us  into  those  regions  of  higher 
spirituality  which  in  this  latest  production  of 
his  are  so  entirely  hidden  from  view. 

11.  sudermann's    die    drei    reiherfedern 

(APRIL,    1899) 

A  curious  illustration  of  the  evasiveness  of 
genius,  and  of  the  impossibility  of  predicting 
its  course  from  the  influence  of  surrounding 
circumstances,  has  lately  been  afforded  in  the 
unexpected  turn  taken  by  the  two  foremost  of 
living  German  dramatists.  Hauptmann,  after 
having  risen  in  The  Sunken  Bell  to  sublime 
visions  of  the  infinite,  has  allowed  himself 
once  more  to  be  drawn  into  the  sphere  of  the 
hopelessly  earthly.  Sudermann,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  racy  satirist,  the  impassioned  orator, 
the  rough-and-ready  delineator  of  blunt  actu- 
ality, all  of  a  sudden  reveals  himself  as  a  lyric 
poet  in  whom  reecho  the  most  aerial  sounds 
of  mediaeval  mysticism. 


25o    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

Paradoxical  and  unrelated  as  these  facts  seem 
to  be,  they  yet  point  to  a  common  source. 
They  are  symptoms  of  the  restless  search  of 
the  modern  world  for  a  new  faith,  of  its  ine- 
radicable striving  after  a  new  answer  to  the  rid- 
dle of  life.  They  clearly  show  that  we  are  still 
in  the  very  midst  of  that  spiritual  fermentation 
which  set  in  with  the  final  decay  of  the  feudal 
world  in  the  eighteenth  century.  They  are 
a  new  proof  of  the  evident  fact  that  the  blue 
flower  of  the  Romanticists  has  not  yet  been 
found,  that  the  spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages  is 
still  walking  about  and  is  still  in  vain  trying 
to  reincarnate  itself. 

Nor  is  the  personal  link  of  Sudermann's 
latest  drama  with  his  former  production  by 
any  means  entirely  wanting.  In  his  Johannes 
he  portrayed  a  moral  visionary  who  goes 
through  the  world  with  eyes  riveted  upon  a 
fictitious  ideal,  and  who,  therefore,  fails  to 
see  the  needs  of  the  life  that  is  pressing  upon 
him.  In  Die  drei  Reiherfedern  he  now  brings 
before  us  an  aesthetic  visionary  who  chases 
after  a  magic  form  of  womanly  love  and 
beauty  that  hovers  before  him  on  the  distant 
horizon,  without  noticing  that  in  his  flight 
he  tramples  into  the  dust  not  only  his  own 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS        251 

happiness,  but  also  the  life  of  the  woman  who 
has  given  to  him  her  all.  To  restate  in  com- 
monplace prose  the  details  of  the  exceedingly- 
romantic  happenings  of  this  drama  would  be 
an  injustice  to  both  author  and  interpreter.  A 
few  words,  however,  about  its  essential  features 
and  its  leading  thought  may  be  not  unwelcome 
to  readers  who  otherwise  might  be  bewildered 
by  the  extraordinary  variety  —  not  to  say,  ap- 
parent incoherence  —  of  the  action. 

Young  Witte,  Prince  of  Gotland,  is  a  mix- 
ture of  Parzival,  Hamlet,  and  Faust.  Like 
Parzival,  he  is  a  knight-errant,  roaming 
through  the  world  in  quest,  if  not  of  the  Grail, 
at  least  of  some  supernatural  goal  of  happi- 
ness. Like  Hamlet,  he  is  a  dreamer  of  deeds 
rather  than  a  doer  of  deeds,  in  constant  con- 
flict between  the  impulse  to  follow  the  call  of 
an  heroic  mission  and  the  capricious  prompt- 
ings of  his  little  weaknesses  and  frailties.  Like 
Faust,  he  is  a  man  of  infinite  susceptibility,  of 
boundless  appetites,  a  consummate  egoist,  but 
at  the  same  time  a  soaring  idealist,  yearning 
for  completeness  of  life.  He  has  left  his  home, 
impelled  by  a  vague  longing  for  the  woman  of 
his  destiny,  the  woman  that  shall  fill  his  soul, 
that  shall  inspire  his   highest  thought.    Fate 


252    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

has  revealed  to  him  that  to  make  himself 
worthy  of  her  he  must  first  win  a  magic  treas- 
ure, the  feathers  of  a  wild,  demoniac  heron 
who  is  worshiped  as  a  god  on  a  desolate  isl- 
and of  the  northern  seas  :  — 

Es  liegt  eine  Insel  im  Nordlandsmeer, 

Wo  Tag  und  Nacht  zur  Dammerung  wird; 

Noch  niemand  feierte  Wiederkehr, 

Der  sich  im  Sturme  dorthin  verirrt. 

Das  ist  dein  Weg. 

Dort,  wo  das  Heil  noch  nie  gelehrt, 

Dort  wird  in  einem  krystallenen  Haus 

Ein  wilder  Reiher  als  Gott  verehrt. 

Dem  Reiher  reisse  drei  Federn  aus 

Und  bringe  sie  her  ! 

If  he  burns  the  first  feather,  he  will  behold 
the  image  of  the  coveted  woman  in  the  far 
distance.  By  burning  the  second,  he  will  be 
united  with  her  in  the  secrecy  of  the  midnight 
hour.  The  burning  of  the  third  will  bring  de- 
struction to  her  likewise. 

Both  the  greatness  and  the  tragedy  of  Witte's 
career  lie  in  this,  that  he  allows  himself  to  be 
drawn  under  the  spell  of  these  fatalistic  concep- 
tions. He  accomplishes  the  task  demanded, 
—  he  struggles  through  the  horrors  of  the  en- 
chanted island  and  brings  back  his  prize.  He 
burns   the  first  feather,  and   now   there  Moats 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS        253 

before  him,  between  sea  and  sky,  the  gigantic 
shadow  of  a  womanly  form  which  incites  his 
feelings  to  highest  passion.  He  rushes  upon  it 
as  Faust  rushed  upon  the  phantom  of  Helen  ; 
but,  like  the  phantom  of  Helen,  it  vanishes  into 
air  before  his  outstretched  arms. 

From  here  on  he  seems  almost  bereft  of 
reason.  He  has  no  thought  of  his  country  suf- 
fering under  the  tyranny  of  a  savage  usurper ; 
he  has  no  eye  for  any  sight  of  real  life  that 
presents  itself  to  him  ;  he  only  raves  in  ecstatic 
desire  for  that  fair  image.  Thus  he  comes,  in 
the  course  of  his  wanderings,  to  the  court  of  a 
young  widowed  queen  who,  in  order  to  satisfy 
the  clamorings  of  her  people  for  a  ruler,  has 
proclaimed  her  willingness  to  accept  the  hand 
of  him  who  in  knightly  combat  should  defeat 
the  host  of  her  wooers.  Half  against  his  will, 
unconsciously  moved  by  the  entreating  glance 
of  the  lovely  young  queen,  he  takes  up  arms 
for  her,  and,  although  severely  wounded  in  the 
tournament,  is  declared  victor  and  accepted  as 
the  queen's  husband.  But  even  now,  at  the 
side  of  the  fairest  and  sweetest  of  women,  he 
finds  no  rest ;  his  only  thought  is  of  that  magic 
vision  in  the  clouds.  The  cares  of  state  weigh 
upon  him ;  like  the  hero  of  "The  Sunken  Belly 


254    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

he  feels  burdened  with  the  commonplace  con- 
cerns of  every-day  life  ;  his  wife  seems  to  draw 
him  down  into  ordinary  enjoyment:  "  Genies- 
sen  macht  gemein."  Despondent  of  his  fate, 
out  of  accord  with  himself,  he  once  more  takes 
refuge  in  the  supernatural :  in  solitary  mid- 
night hour  he  burns  the  second  magic  feather, 
which  is  to  unite  him  with  the  beloved.  The 
queen,  who  has  spent  a  sleepless  night,  griev- 
ing over  her  husband's  gloom,  is  attracted  by 
the  flame  and  thus  appears  before  him.  But 
the  frenzied  man,  instead  of  seeing  in  her  ap- 
pearance the  fulfillment  of  the  oracle,  instead 
of  recognizing  in  her  the  woman  of  his  des- 
tiny, reproaches  her  for  having  watched  and 
suspected  him.  His  harsh  words  cause  her 
long-repressed  feelings  for  him  to  break  forth 
without  reserve;  and  in  a  supremely  beauti- 
ful scene  husband  and  wife  are  for  a  moment 
truly  brought  together. 

But  only  for  a  moment.  For  soon  Witte's 
restless  craving  leads  him  again  astray.  He 
abandons  himself  to  wild  orgies  and  dissipa- 
tions, and  although  in  a  measure  he  atones 
for  these  by  rising  to  spasmodic  heroism  in 
the  political  crisis  brought  upon  the  country 
through  his  eccentricities,  he  sinks  back  into 


CONTEMPORARY    LETTERS        255 

his  former  state  as  soon  as  the  crisis  is  past ; 
and  he  ends  by  laying  down  his  crown  and 
resuming  his  old  knight-errantship,  he,  "  der 
Sehnsucht  nimmermuder  Sohn."  In  the  last 
act  we  see  him,  a  prematurely  broken  man, 
after  many  weary  wanderings  and  many  fruit- 
less undertakings,  on  his  way  homeward  to 
the  scenes  of  his  youth.  Passing  by  the  castle 
of  his  wife,  he  is  recognized  by  a  peasant,  and 
the  news  is  brought  to  the  queen.  She  who, 
during  all  these  years  of  loneliness,  has  lived 
for  him  and  in  him  only,  at  once  hastens  to 
greet  him.  And  now  at  last  the  scales  fall  from 
his  eyes.  He  sees  that  he  has  wasted  his  life, 
that  he  has  been  under  the  spell  of  an  illusion, 
that  he  has  willfully  spurned  heaven's  best  gifts. 
Feverishly  he  grasps  for  the  last  fatal  feather; 
he  will  break  the  spell,  will  destroy  the  perni- 
cious image  that  has  haunted  him  all  his  life. 
He  casts  the  feather  into  the  flame.  But  in- 
stead of  the  hoped-for  magic  effect,  he  sees 
his  own  wife  sinking  at  his  feet,  uttering  a  last 
dying  word  of  faith  and  love.  Despairingly  he 
throws  himself  upon  her  body,  and  is  thus 
united  to  her  at  last :  — 

Wer  seiner  Sehnsucht  nachlauft,  muss  dran  sterben  ; 
Nur  wer  sie  wegwirft,  dem  ergiebt  sie  sich. 


256    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

That  a  drama  like  this  should  in  general 
have  found  little  favor  with  the  critics  is  not 
surprising.  Surprising  —  and  highly  gratify- 
ing—  is  the  fact  that  the  verdict  of  the  reading 
public  seems  in  this  case  to  differ  widely  from 
that  of  the  critics.  Already,  hardly  three 
months  after  its  first  performance,  the  drama 
has  reached  a  tenth  edition.  That  it  has  its 
serious  artistic  blemishes  it  would  be  folly  to 
deny.  There  is  a  certain  forced  grandeur  in 
the  heroic  parts  and  an  equally  forced  vulgar- 
ity in  the  subordinate  figures.  And  reasonable 
exception  might  perhaps  be  taken  to  this  whole 
genre  of  symbolical  poetry.  It  certainly  is  true 
that  the  leading  idea  of  this  drama,  embodied 
in  characters  of  our  own  time  and  in  actions 
belonging  to  the  sphere  of  our  own  experience, 
would  have  touched  the  average  reader  of  to- 
day more  quickly  and  more  surely.  But  may 
it  not  be  that,  on  that  very  account,  this  work 
will  speak  more  distinctly  to  future  genera- 
tions, that  its  very  timelessness  and  incon- 
creteness  will  give  it  permanence  and  universal 
value  ?  Even  if  this  should  not  be  the  case, 
it  will  most  assuredly  live  in  history  as  a  noble 
monument  of  German  intellectual  life  at  the 
end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  as  a  magna  pars 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS        257 

of  the  artistic  revival  which  has  placed  the  Ger- 
man drama  once  more  in  the  very  front  rank 
of  European  literature.  For,  however  strange 
and  far  away  at  first  sight  its  characters  and 
its  actions  may  seem  to  be,  it  is,  after  all,  most 
closely  related  to  our  own  lives ;  it  brings  be- 
fore us  what  may  be  called  the  problem  of 
problems  of  our  own  time,  —  the  reconciliation 
of  intensest  activity  with  simple  enjoyment ; 
of  restless  striving  with  spiritual  peace. 

in.   Paulsen's    philosophia    militans 

(APRIL,    I9OI) 

With  the  exception  of  Herman  Grimm, 
there  is  no  German  scholar  now  living  who 
may  be  said  to  maintain  the  traditions  of  the 
classic  era  of  German  idealism  in  as  vigorous 
and  broadly  effective  a  manner  as  Friedrich 
Paulsen.  In  temper  and  training  he  is  widely 
apart  from  his  older  colleague.  Grimm  seems 
to  belong  to  the  idyllic  atmosphere  of  Weimar 
court  life.  One  might  characterize  his  habitual 
state  of  mind  by  the  lines  in  which  Goethe 
expressed  one  side  at  least  of  his  own  all-em- 
bracing nature :  — 

Zierlich  Denken  und  suss  Erinnern 
1st  das  Leben  im  tiefsten  Innern. 


258    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

One  may  imagine  him  roaming  about  with 
Goethe  in  "forest  and  cavern  "  of  the  Thurin- 
gian  Highlands,  reveling  in  the  stillness  of 
the  woods,  and  musing  about  the  destiny  of 
man  ;  one  may  think  of  him  as  delightful  com- 
panion and  graceful  raconteur  at  one  of  those 
simple  and  unpretentious  entertainments  at  the 
Dornburg  or  the  Belvedere  which  fascinated 
the  worldly  Mme.  de  Stael.  Paulsen  is  made 
of  harder  stuff.  The  leading  professor  of  ethics 
at  the  foremost  German  university  is  still  at 
heart  the  farmer's  boy  of  forty  years  ago.  He 
has  something  in  him  of  Fichte's  uncompro- 
mising temper ;  he  is  altogether  a  man  of  the 
people ;  he  does  not  care  to  shine  in  society ; 
he  opens  up  only  when  in  company  with  a 
few  trusted  and  old-time  friends  ;  he  is  most 
truly  himself  when  called  upon,  either  in  the  lec- 
ture-room or  in  the  literary  arena,  to  expound 
or  defend  a  far-reaching  moral  principle.  Both 
Grimm  and  Paulsen  seem  somewhat  out  of 
place  in  the  stir  and  rush  of  the  intensely 
modern  and  intensely  practical  German  capital ; 
but  it  is  a  hopeful  sign  for  the  future  of  Ger- 
man culture  that  two  such  men  should  have 
risen  to  influence  and  leadership  in  the  midst 
of  these  very  surroundings. 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS        259 

Just  now  Paulsen  has  published  a  volume 
of  essays,  entitled  Philosophia  MHitans,  which 
will  perhaps  still  more  clearly  than  his  former, 
more  systematic  writings  bring  home  to  the 
popular  mind  his  peculiar  position  as  defender 
of  idealism.  As  these  essays  address  them- 
selves avowedly  to  the  auditorium  maximum 
of  persons  interested  in  the  literary  aspect  of 
philosophy,  it  may  be  not  unfitting  for  one 
of  this  class  of  readers  to  note  down  some  of 
the  impressions  which  he  received  from  them, 
and  to  point  out  the  place  which  they  seem 
to  him  to  have  in  the  general  movement  of 
contemporary  German  thought. 

All  of  the  essays  here  collected  deal  in  one 
way  or  another  with  the  great  intellectual  con- 
flict which,  though  it  pervades  the  life  of  all 
modern  nations,  is  being  fought  at  present 
with  particular  bitterness  in  Germany :  the 
conflict  of  the  idealistic  view  of  the  world  with 
the  supernaturalistic  dogma  on  the  one  hand, 
and  with  materialistic  science  on  the  other.  As 
typical  representatives  of  these  two  extremes 
of  supernaturalism  and  materialism,  Paulsen 
considers  at  length  two  books  which,  during 
the  last  two  years,  have  aroused  public  opinion 
in  Germany  to  a  remarkable  degree:  a  His- 


26o    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

tory  of Idealism ,  by  the  Catholic  philosopher, 
O.  Willmann,  and  Haeckel's  ultra-  (or  shall  we 
say  pseudo-)  scientific  Riddles  of  the  Universe. 
These  two  books  illustrate  to  Paulsen  the  con- 
dition in  which  Philosophy  has  found  herself 
placed  now  for  a  good  many  years  past.  Her 
road,  he  says  in  effect,  passes  through  two 
hostile  camps,  from  both  of  which  she  is  con- 
tinually being  insulted  and  attacked.  On  the 
one  side  she  is  accused  of  leading  to  atheism 
and  moral  perversion  ;  on  the  other  she  is 
reviled  as  a  traitor  to  science,  as  a  mounte- 
bank cheating  the  credulous  with  such  useless 
patent-medicine  stuff  as  "God,  Freedom,  and 
Immortality."  No  doubt,  the  two  extremes 
hate  each  other,  but  in  their  enmity  against 
idealistic  philosophy  they  are  at  one.  And  in 
a  certain  way  they  esteem  each  other  and  are 
indispensable  to  each  other.  There  can  be 
little  question  but  that  Haeckel's  Riddles  of 
the  Universe  will  be  greeted  by  the  Clerical 
party  with  a  certain  joyous  satisfaction  as  a 
complete  incarnation  of  the  evil  principle 
of  modern  philosophy.  And  Haeckel,  on  his 
part,  takes  a  certain  aesthetic  pleasure  in  Cath- 
olic theology  and  philosophy,  since  here  he 
sees  in  its   normal   and  fullv  developed  form 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS        261 

what  appears  only  as  a  partial   and   stunted 
growth  in  the  systems  of  Kant  and  Fichte. 

As  might  be  expected,  Paulsen  has  an  easy 
game  with  the  slander  and  calumnies  heaped 
by  his  Catholic  opponent  upon  nearly  every 
great  name  in  the  history  of  philosophy  since 
Thomas  Aquinas.  Indeed,  it  might  almost 
seem  a  waste  of  energy  to  refute  such  state- 
ments as  these  :  that  Spinoza  was  a  tricky  Jew 
and  unscrupulous  demagogue,  whose  criminal 
ethics  had  no  other  aim  than  the  extirpation  of 
Christianity  ;  that  Hume  was  a  shallow  soph- 
ist, "whose  skepticism  resembles  the  worms 
that  form  in  a  dead  body  ;  "  that  Kant  was  a 
rebel  against  law  and  duty,  an  advocate  of  self- 
ishness and  license,  an  underminer  of  society, 
a  Robespierre  in  philosophic  disguise.  What 
gives  to  this  whole  discussion  its  significance 
is  this,  that  a  man  like  Paulsen  should  con- 
descend to  take  notice  of  such  distortions  of 
history,  that  he  should  think  it  necessary  to 
uphold  once  more  the  fundamental  thought 
of  the  last  three  hundred  years  against  the  vio- 
lent assaults  made  upon  it  by  the  resuscitated 
ghost  of  mediaeval  scholasticism.  No  man 
could  be  further  removed  from  sectarian  pre- 
judices than  is    Paulsen ;  no   one  could    be 


262     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

fairer  toward  all  forms  of  religious  or  philo- 
sophic belief.  No  writer  of  recent  years  has 
done  fuller  justice  to  the  greatness,  univer- 
sality, large-mindedness,  and  beauty  of  the 
mediaeval  Church.  One  might  even  say  that 
there  is  a  vein  of  mild  contemplativeness,  a 
fondness  for  mysticism  in  him  that  has  at 
times  made  him,  perhaps,  too  lenient  toward 
religious  creeds  which,  after  all,  do  not  stand 
the  test  of  clear  thinking.  If  such  a  man,  then, 
sees  himself  forced  to  enter  the  arena  for  the 
defense  of  the  most  elementary  principles  of 
free  thought,  it  is  manifest  that  Hannibal  is, 
indeed,  ante  portas,  that  the  Catholic  Church 
is  once  more  preparing  for  an  attack  all  along 
the  line  against  every  stronghold  of  the  mod- 
ern view  of  life;  and  the  authorities  responsi- 
ble for  public  instruction  in  Germany  will  do 
well  on  their  part  not  to  omit  anything  that 
may  help  to  prevent  the  substitution,  in  the 
minds  of  the  growing  generation,  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  Thomas  Aquinas  for  the  philoso- 
phy of  Kant. 

That  this  is  indeed  the  goal  which  the  Cath- 
olic Church  has  in  view,  is  made  clear  by  a 
papal  rescript  of  September  8,  1899,  to  the 
French  clergy,  quoted   by  Paulsen,  in  which 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS        263 

Pope  Leo  XIII  warns  the  clerical  authorities 
against  an  "insidious  and  dangerous  philoso- 
phy of  Protestant  origin  "  which  cannot  but 
lead  to  utter  moral  ruin  and  destruction.  It 
is  defined  as  a  doctrine  "which  under  the  se- 
ductive pretext  of  delivering  human  reason 
from  all  prejudices  and  deceptions,  denies  rea- 
son the  right  to  any  conclusions  except  about 
its  own  functions,  and  thus  abandons  to  a 
boundless  skepticism  all  those  arguments 
which,  by  approved  metaphysics,  were  made 
the  indispensable  and  indestructible  founda- 
tion for  demonstrating  the  existence  of  God, 
the  spirituality  and  immortality  of  the  soul,  and 
the  objective  reality  of  the  outer  world." 

While  in  this  whole  discussion  Paulsen 
asserts  the  reasonableness  of  the  Kantian  view 
of  life  against  the  unreasonable  absolutism 
of  papal  infallibility,  he  maintains  it  in  his 
criticism  of  Haeckel's  Weltrdtsel  against  the 
equally  unreasonable  infallibility  of  scientific 
materialism.  Into  the  details  of  this  contro- 
versy I  cannot  here  enter.  I  can  only  urge 
the  reader  to  follow  himself  the  truly  delight- 
ful path  of  Paulsen's  critical  analysis.  Highly 
entertaining  is  the  way  in  which  he  dissects 
Haeckel's  fantastic  and  futile  attempt  to  re- 


264    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

place  both  speculative  and  experimental  psy- 
chology by  what  he  calls  "  evolutionary  psy- 
chology,"—  a  method  which  turns  out  to  be 
based  upon  the  fundamental  error  of  an  arbi- 
trary identification  of  locomotion  and  con- 
sciousness in  the  lowest  organisms.  Masterly  is 
the  proof  how  little  Haeckel's  doctrine  of  the 
relation  between  body  and  mind  has  to  do  with 
Spinoza's  theory  of  the  parallelism  of  physi- 
cal and  psychical  processes,  although  Haeckel 
plumes  himself  upon  having  given  to  this  Spi- 
nozistic  theory  its  final  scientific  application :  in 
Spinoza  (so  Paulsen  shows)  a  clear  juxtaposi- 
tion of  two  different  kinds  of  processes,  ac- 
companying each  other,  corresponding  to  each 
other,  but  without  the  relation  of  cause  and  ef- 
fect ;  in  Haeckel,  an  utter  confusion  and  chaos, 
arising  from  his  promiscuous  use  of  matter, 
motion,  energy,  thought,  spirit  as  identical 
terms.  Most  amusing  is  the  description  of 
Haeckel's  monistic  religion  of  the  future,  in 
which  the  churches  will  be  transformed  into 
aquariums  "illustrating  by  mollusks,  crabs,  and 
corals  the  wonderful  art-forms  of  sea  life,"  the 
high  altar  being  replaced  by  an  "  Urania  re- 
vealing in  the  revolutions  of  the  celestial  orbs 
the  omnipotence  of  the  law  of  substance,"  while 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS        265 

the  whole  cult,  of  course,  is  to  be  directed  by 
Haeckel  himself,  the  discoverer  of  the  homo 
ala/us,  of  the  cyto-  and  the  histopsyche. 

All  this  I  can  only  touch  upon  briefly.  But 
in  order  to  indicate  the  position  which  Paulsen 
himself  occupies  between  these  two  extremes 
of  a  supernaturalistic  theology  on  the  one  hand 
and  a  pseudo-philosophic  science  on  the  other, 
I  cannot  refrain  from  quoting  in  full  a  pas- 
sage in  which,  at  the  end  of  the  whole  book,, 
he  seeks  to  define  the  positive  and  construc- 
tive element  which,  in  spite  of  all  its  vagaries 
and  absurdities,  this  essay  of  Haeckel's  con- 
tains :  — 

After  all,  one  may  perhaps  see  in  the  World  Riddles 
a  symptom  that  natural  science  is  once  more  on  the  point  of 
lifting  itself  beyond  the  merely  physical  aspect  of  things  to  a 
higher  and  more  comprehensive,  in  other  words,  to  a  philo- 
sophical aspect  of  the  world.  Haeckel's  final  goal  is  marked 
by  the  names  Bruno,  Spinoza,  Goethe  ;  he  tends  ultimately 
toward  a  view  which  conceives  of  psychic  life,  not  as  of 
something  removed  from  reality  and  foreign  to  it,  but  as 
something  most  intimately  allied  to  it,  as  the  other,  the 
inner  side  of  its  being.  What  Haeckel  really  means  to 
say  is  this :  to  every  relatively  complete  system  of  .bodily 
processes  there  corresponds  a  system  of  mental  processes  ; 
all  things  are  of  psycho-physical  nature.  The  most  manifest 
case  of  this  universal  state  of  things  is  found  in  the  organic 
forms  of  life.    To  the  physiological  observation  they  appear 


266    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

as  units  of  bodily  systems  with  most  complex  processes  of 
locomotion,  which  are  regulated  by  the  universal  law  of  the 
conservation  of  energy.  But  by  the  side  of  these  processes 
of  locomotion  which  the  physiologist  observes,  and  whose 
laws  he  tries  to  discover,  there  are  going  on  other  processes 
which  are  not  accessible  to  the  scrutiny  of  the  physiologist. 
These  mental  processes  are  accessible  to  us  directly  only 
in  one  way,  namely,  through  our  own  consciousness  ;  but 
they  are  inferred  by  everybody  as  existing  for  the  whole 
realm  of  human  and  animal  life.  To  the  thoughtful  observer 
of  nature,  however,  it  is  impossible  not  to  go  beyond  this. 
The  inner  affinity  and  unity  of  the  universe,  with  its  con- 
stant interchange  of  cause  and  effect  and  its  constant  trans- 
formation of  the  organic  and  the  inorganic,  is  so  great  that 
even  the  physicist  finds  himself  constrained  to  believe  in  a 
psycho-physical  principle  of  all  nature.  And  thus  we  come 
to  the  conclusion  :  To  every  uniform  physical  system,  to 
the  simplest,  such  as  cells  and  molecules,  as  well  as  to  the 
largest,  such  as  celestial  bodies  and  cosmic  systems,  there 
corresponds  some  sort  and  some  form  of  mental  life,  com- 
parable in  a  way  to  the  life  which  we  experience  in  our- 
selves. 

Had  Haeckel  gone  the  whole  length  of  his  thoughts, 
he  would  have  arrived  at  the  view  which  Fechner  has  de- 
veloped with  full  precision  and  clearness.  Are  Fechner's 
thoughts,  after  having  rested  for  a  generation  almost  inactive 
in  the  womb  of  time,  at  last  about  to  be  called  to  new  life  ? 
Are  they  to  accomplish  in  the  new  century  what  they  clearly 
point  to  ?  Are  they  to  win  back  natural  science  to  an  ideal- 
istic view  of  the  world  from  which  it  had  been  estranged  by 
the  failure  of  a  priori  speculation  ? 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       267 

In  a  highly  suggestive  and  truly  enlight- 
ening book  on  contemporary  German  life  by 
William  H.  Dawson,  which  has  just  come  to 
my  notice,1  there  is  a  particularly  well-balanced 
chapter  on  "  Religious  Life  and  Thought." 
The  burden  of  this  chapter  is  an  expression 
of  regret  that  the  materialistic  doctrines  as 
preached  by  the  Social  Democracy  should 
have  taken  away  from  a  large  part  of  the  work- 
ing classes  all  respect  for  religion,  all  super- 
natural faith,  all  recognition  of  supreme  and 
objective  ethical  laws.  Although  this  statement 
seems  to  me  to  leave  out  of  account  the  ethical 
and  religious  forces  embodied  in  the  Socialist 
movement  itself,  it  is  certainly  true  that  these 
constructive  forces  have  not  yet  produced  a 
system  of  idealistic  opinions,  to  which  the 
mass  of  those  who  have  fallen  away  from  the 
old  church  creed  would  be  willing  to  subscribe. 
It  is  to  such  men  as  Paulsen,  Eucken,  Kalt- 
hoff,  and  Naumann  that  we  must  look  for 
helping  on  the  day  of  this  new  secular  religion 
of  the  masses. 

1  German  Life  in  Town  and  Country.  G.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons,  1 90 1. 


268    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

IV.  HERMAN  GRIMM 
An  Obituary  (June,  ipoi) 
During  the  last  six  years  I  have  had  the  priv- 
ilege of  friendly  relations  with  the  man  whom 
in  the  preceding  sketch  I  designated  as  one  of 
the  few  living  representatives  of  that  subli- 
mated culture  of  heart  and  mind  which  we  as- 
sociate with  the  great  names  of  classic  German 
literature.  Now  that  death  has  come  to  him, 
I  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  say  a  few  words 
in  homage  to  the  spirit  so  suddenly,  if  not 
unexpectedly,  departed. 

Three  years  ago,  when  his  seventieth  birth- 
day brought  forth  many  public  protestations 
of  regard  and  appreciation,  Herman  Grimm 
wrote  to  me  :  "I  am  very  much  surprised  to 
find  that,  in  the  eyes  of  others,  my  life  has  had 
consistency  and  inner  unity.  To  myself,  it 
has  seemed  all  along  a  series  of  impulses  from 
without ;  and  nearly  everything  I  have  done 
was  the  result  of  some  chance  suggestion  of 
the  moment."  The  two  fundamental  qualities 
of  Herman  Grimm's  nature  could  not  be 
better  formulated  than  in  these  words  of  his 
own. 

What   Goethe   says    of  lyric   art,  that    all 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       269 

genuine  poetry  is  poetry  of  the  moment,  may 
indeed  be  applied  to  all  of  Herman  Grimm's 
writings.  Whether  he  speaks  of  Michelangelo 
or  Homer,  of  Goethe  or  Emerson,  of  Raphael 
or  Diirer,  we  always  feel  that  he  expresses  in 
the  first  place  his  own  mood,  a  momentary 
phase  of  his  own  feeling,  a  state  of  his  mind 
as  determined  by  certain  impressions  from 
without.  This  it  is,  I  take  it,  that  gives  to 
Herman  Grimm's  biographical  and  aesthetic 
estimates  their  supreme  artistic  charm.  He 
had  no  sympathy  with  that  soulless  and  spir- 
itless method  of  literary  or  artistic  research, 
only  too  common  in  our  universities  to-day, 
according  to  which  it  is  the  sole  office  of  the 
critic  to  dissolve  a  poet's  or  artist's  work  into 
the  various  elements  of  which  it  may  be  com- 
posed, to  detect  in  it  traces  of  the  work  of  some 
other  artist  or  author,  to  discuss  its  relation  to 
its  models,  and  so  on.  Such  a  method,  if  ap- 
plied exclusively  or  even  prevailingly,  seemed 
to  Herman  Grimm  a  perversion  of  the  true 
mission  of  the  critic,  which  is,  to  interpret  the 
essential  meaning  of  a  work  of  genius.  For 
this  essential  meaning,  he  thought,  could  be 
grasped  only  by  letting  the  work  as  a  whole 
exert  its  concentrated   force  upon  the  critic's 


270    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

mind,  by  letting  it,  as  it  were,  pass  through 
his  mind  into  a  new,  spiritualized  form  of  ex- 
istence. This  is  the  way  in  which  he  himself 
approached  the  works  of  the  masters  to  the 
interpretation  of  which  he  devoted  his  life. 

As  the  lyric  poet  draws  inspiration  from  the 
moment,  and,  by  reproducing  it  in  his  song, 
gives  permanence  to  it,  so  Herman  Grimm 
imbued  himself  with  the  impressions  from 
great  lives  and  great  works  of  art ;  and,  by 
giving  shape  to  these  impressions,  himself 
produced  works  of  art  worthy  to  stand  by  the 
side  of  the  originals  from  which  he  had  drawn 
his  inspiration.  His  lectures  on  Goethe,  his 
biographies  of  Michelangelo  and  Raphael,  his 
essays  on  Homer,  Bettina  von  Arnim,  or 
Bocklin,  are,  therefore,  in  a  most  pregnant 
sense,  part  of  his  own  self;  they  are  not  so 
much  contributions  to  knowledge  (although 
they  are  this  also)  as  creations  of  the  imagina- 
tion ;  they  should  be  judged  by  artistic  rather 
than  by  scientific  standards.  They  undoubt- 
edly have  the  faults  of  the  artistic  temper ;  they 
are  not  free  from  willfulness  and  mannerism  ; 
they  often  reveal  more  clearly  the  personality 
of  the  writer  than  the  subject-matter  of  which 
he  writes.    But  they  never  fail  to  bring  before 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       271 

us  some  real  and  striking  aspect  of  the  topic 
under  consideration  ;  they  never  fail  to  sur- 
prise us  by  some  deep  intuition;  they  never 
fail  to  give  us  some  new  insight  into  the  mys- 
terious working  of  genius.  And  who  would 
not  prefer  to  see  Diirer  or  Dante  through  the 
eyes  of  Herman  Grimm  than  through  those 
of  an  irreproachable  and  impersonal  collector 
of  facts  ? 

We  understand,  then,  why  to  Herman 
Grimm  himself  his  life's  work  may  have 
seemed,  at  times  at  least,  to  have  been  deter- 
mined by  momentary  impressions  and  im- 
pulses rather  than  by  fixed  and  abiding  max- 
ims. But  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  think 
that  this  life  as  a  whole  had  not  been  guided 
by  a  very  definite  and  permanent  principle. 
It  is,  indeed,  impossible  to  read  a  page  of 
Herman  Grimm  without  feeling  that  the  un- 
derlying principle  of  his  whole  activity  was 
the  imperturbable  conviction  that  in  scholarly 
research,  in  literary  and  artistic  production,  in 
spiritual  culture,  is  to  be  found  the  noblest, 
the  most  important,  the  most  sacred  concern 
of  mankind.  In  this  respect,  more  than  in 
any  other,  he  was  a  contemporary  not  so  much 
of  Bismarck  and  Bebel  as  of  Schiller  and  the 


272    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

Humboldts.  Only  a  few  months  before  his 
death  he  wrote  to  me  :  — 

"  The  more  we  Germans  grow  in  political 
and  commercial  influence,  the  more  necessary 
it  is  to  remember  that  we  owe  all  that  we  are 
to  our  spiritual  achievements.  In  some  circles 
here  the  opinion  seems  prevalent  that  these 
spiritual  achievements  were  of  secondary  im- 
portance, that  they  were  a  traditional  possession 
which  might  be  kept  without  particular  effort. 
I  do  not  say  that  the  Government  thinks  so  ; 
what  I  say  is  that  a  large  part  of  the  public  is 
addicted  to  this  belief.  More  than  ever,  then, 
it  is  to-day  the  duty  of  Germans,  wherever 
they  live  upon  this  globe,  to  preserve  the  spir- 
itual unity  of  the  German  race,  and  to  guard 
it  as  a  priceless  jewel." 

This  was  the  spirit  which  impelled  his  whole 
literary  production.  He  was  a  living  protest 
against  the  common,  the  matter-of-fact,  the 
unfeeling,  the  flippant,  the  sensual,  the  vul- 
gar; he  was  a  living  symbol  of  all  that  uplifts, 
expands,  rejoices,  purifies,  and  ennobles.  To 
him,  the  scholar  was  not  a  mere  hunter  for 
facts,  a  maker  of  conjectures,  a  defender  or 
destroyer  of  authorities,  but  the  guardian  of 
the  human  past,  the  seeker  for  eternal  truths, 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       273 

the  interpreter  of  the  universe.  To  him,  the 
artist  was  not  a  mere  merrymaker  and  pleas- 
ure-giver, but  the  creator  of  high  ideals,  the 
prophet  of  a  coming  golden  age,  the  priest 
of  a  religion  of  humanity.  He  was  himself  a 
priest  of  this  religion  —  the  religion  whose  one 
and  only  tenet  Goethe  has  expressed  in  the 
words  :  — 

Was  kann  der  Mensch  im  Leben  mehr  gewinnen, 
AIs  dass  sich  Gott-Natur  ihm  offenbare, 
Wie  sie  das  Feste  lasst  zu  Geist  zerrinnen, 
Wie  sie  das  Geisterzeugte  fest  bewahre. 

Personally,  Herman  Grimm  was  a  man  of 
commanding  presence,  and,  in  his  later  years, 
of  patriarchal  dignity  and  kindliness,  in  this 
respect  also  preserving  the  precious  heritage 
of  a  noble  ancestry.  Being  given  over  only  to 
ideal  pursuits,  and  keeping  constant  company 
with  the  best  spirits  of  all  the  ages,  he  was 
entirely  raised  above  the  pettiness  of  personal 
intrigue  and  malice  which  has  disfigured  so 
many  scholars'  lives.  I  well  remember  a  con- 
versation which  1  had  with  him  some  years  ago 
on  certain  aspects  of  Berlin  University  life. 
When,  during  the  course  of  the  conversation, 
I  could  not  repress  my  indignation  at  the  fact 
that,  through  certain  personal  animosities,  he 


274    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

had  been  cut  off  from  election  to  the  Prussian 
Academy  of  Sciences,  and  remarked  that  this 
seemed  to  me  a  national  disgrace,  he  smiled 
and  said  almost  gayly,  "  Oh,  no,  that  is  not  a 
national  disgrace  ;  it  is  simply  funny  (es  ist  ein- 
fach  komiscb)." 

Germans,  naturally,  will  feel  the  loss  of 
Herman  Grimm  most  keenly  ;  but  Americans 
also  have  a  special  reason  for  mourning  him. 
Seldom  have  American  character  and  Ameri- 
can scenery  more  sympathetically  and  truth- 
fully been  depicted  than  in  his  novel  Unuber- 
windliche  Mdchte.  No  foreign  writer  has 
understood  Emerson  as  well  as  he.  And  even 
in  his  last  days,  when  the  South-African  hor- 
rors had  embittered  him  against  the  British, 
he  retained  his  hopes  and  sympathies  for  the 
Anglo-Saxon  beyond  the  sea.  One  of  his  last 
public  acts  was  an  attempt,  happily  successful, 
to  arouse  interest  in  German  governmental 
circles  for  the  Germanic  Museum  of  Harvard 
University ;  so  that  his  name,  together  with 
that  of  the  Emperor,  will  be  remembered 
among  the  names  of  the  first  German  friends 
and  patrons  of  this  American  institution. 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       275 

V.    GERHART    HAUPTMANN's     MICHAEL 
KRAMER     (FEBRUARY,    I9O1) 

About  a  year  ago,  in  speaking  of  Gerhart 
Hauptmann's  Fuhrmann  Henscbel,  I  expressed 
the  hope  that  Hauptmann's  return  to  the 
uncompromising  naturalism  of  his  earliest 
works,  as  manifested  in  that  drama,  would 
prove  to  be  only  a  transient  phase  in  his  de- 
velopment ;  that  his  next  serious  production 
would  again  lead  us  to  the  heights  of  existence 
reached  in  Die  Versunkene  Glocke ;  would  show 
the  poet  once  more  journeying  towards  the 
promised  land  of  ideal  art.  In  a  way,  this  hope 
has  been  sadly  disappointed.  Michael  Kramer, 
his  latest  drama,  is  altogether  of  a  piece  with 
his  first  revolutionary  outbursts  of  indignation 
at  social  corruption.  Like  For  Sonnenaufgang 
and  Das  Friedensfest,  it  reveals  a  world  of  atro- 
cious vulgarity,  foulness,  and  vice ;  and,  like 
these  earlier  productions,  it  forces  upon  us 
the  question :  How  is  it  possible  that  a  poet 
of  such  refinement  of  moral  feeling,  such  deli- 
cacy of  imagination,  and  such  exquisite  light- 
ness of  artistic  touch,  should,  after  all,  seem 
by  preference  to  wallow  in  the  mire  of  social 
misery  and  moral  degradation  ? 


276    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

Is  this,  then,  really  the  life  led  by  the  typi- 
cal German  of  to-day?  These  unhappy  and 
unintelligent  marriages,  these  capricious  and 
masterful  parents,  these  rebellious  and  disloyal 
children,  these  swaggering  men  and  these  grace- 
less women,  this  stupidly  arrogant  cavalierdom, 
this  petty  and  self-seeking  bureaucracy,  this 
universal  indecency,  lust,  and  debauchery  — 
that  is  Germany,  that  is  what  we  were  fond  of 
calling  the  land  of  idealism,  the  land  of  intel- 
lectual aristocracy,  the  land  of  pure  and  loving 
family  life  ?  If  it  is,  we  can  only  pray  that  the 
sins  of  the  present  generation  may  not  be 
visited  upon  our  children  and  our  children's 
children ;  for  if  they  were,  the  future  could  bring 
nothing  but  national  disintegration  and  degen- 
eracy. However  this  may  be,  we  cannot  but 
deplore  the  fact  that  a  genius  like  Hauptmann's 
should  have  been  condemned  to  live  in  sur- 
roundings which  have  imparted  even  to  his 
noblest  creations  a  fatal  germ  of  morbidness 
and  gloom  ;  which  have  forced  him,  too,  like 
so  many  inferior  men,  into  the  class  of  writers 
of  whom  a  contemporary  epigrammatist  truth- 
fully says, — 

Das  heissen  sie  heute  die  Welt  verstchn: 
Statt  der  Rose  die  Blattlaus  schn  — 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       277 

and  which  have  deceived  him  into  thinking 
that  the  painful  and  the  tragic  are  identical 
terms. 

What  is  the  action  in  this  latest  drama  of 
his,  Michael  Kramer  ?  One  might  say,  there 
is  no  action  at  all ;  there  is  only  a  situation, 
a  calamitous  family  situation.  The  father, 
old  Kramer  himself,  is  a  painter,  a  man  of 
ardent  convictions,  but  apparently  mediocre 
talent.  His  convictions  have  been  inherited 
by  his  daughter,  who,  however,  is  a  singularly 
ungraceful  person.  His  talents  have  been 
transmitted  to  his  son,  who,  however,  is  a 
moral  wretch.  Add  to  this  that  Kramer  has 
no  inner  relation  whatever  with  his  wife,  a 
hopelessly  humdrum  and  unintelligent  person 
—  and  the  necessary  ingredients  for  family 
misery  are  at  hand.  The  father,  with  stubborn 
tenacity,  devotes  himself  to  his  art  —  so  much 
so  that  he  lives  almost  exclusively  in  his  studio, 
apart  from  the  family  ;  the  son,  with  equal 
consistency,  wastes  his  vitality  by  lounging 
about  in  doubtful  resorts  and  by  intercourse 
with  waitresses  and  chorus  girls.  The  mother 
limits  her  activity  to  taking  the  son's  part 
whenever  the  father's  indignation  at  his  con- 
duct becomes  particularly  violent.  The  daugh- 


278    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

ter  bears  the  burden  of  the  whole  family. 
The  end,  of  course,  is  the  son's  suicide,  borne 
by  the  father  with  the  exaltation  of  a  man 
brought  face  to  face  with  eternity. 

No  one  would  deny,  I  suppose,  that  a  theme 
like  this  might  form  a  proper  subject  for  dra- 
matic art.  A  number  of  conflicts  arising  from 
it  may  be  imagined  which  would  be  genuinely 
tragic.  If  we  were  made  to  see  the  struggle 
in  the  son's  breast  between  his  artistic  striv- 
ing and  his  baser  appetites  ;  if  we  were  made 
to  feel  that  a  noble  nature  was  here,  in  spite 
of  brave  resistance,  dragged  down  by  sin  and 
lust,  until  at  last  suicide  was  found  to  be  the 
only  escape,  the  only  way  in  which  moral  free- 
dom could  assert  itself,  we  should  follow  this 
struggle  with  that  mixture  of  painful  and 
pleasurable  sensations  which,  according  to  Vol- 
kelt,  constitutes  the  tragic  emotion.  And  the 
same  would  be  the  case  if  the  conflict  between 
father  and  son  were  emphasized  and  carefully 
delineated  ;  if  we  saw  two  principles  clashing 
with  each  other,  —  paternal  authority  on  the 
one  hand,  self-assertion  of  the  individual  on 
the  other,  —  each  confident  of  its  right,  each 
subversive  of  the  other.  Or,  finally,  if  the 
conflict  were   confined   to   the  father's   breast: 


CONTEMPORARY    LETTERS       279 

if  we  saw  him  at  variance  with  himself,  expe- 
riencing in  his  own  soul  the  contrast  between 
the  old,  autocratic  view  of  life  and  the  new 
demands  of  freer  humanity,  as  represented  by 
his  son ;  if  we  were  made  to  understand  how 
impossible  it  was  for  him  to  overcome  this 
contrast,  and  how  he  was  thus  bound  to  plunge 
both  himself  and  his  son  into  ruin — this  also 
would  be  a  truly  tragic  sight. 

It  would  be  preposterous  to  assume  for  a 
moment  that  a  master  like  Hauptmann  should 
not  have  thought  of  these  various  conflicts. 
Indeed,  he  has  indicated  traces  of  them  him- 
self throughout  his  drama ;  but  he  has  only 
indicated  them.  With  full  deliberation,  he 
pushes  all  these  tragic  conflicts  into  the  back- 
ground, and  concentrates  our  attention  upon 
the  unqualifiedly  painful,  the  loathsome  spec- 
tacle of  the  moral  wretchedness  into  which  the 
son  has  at  length  sunk.  In  reading  these  scenes 
we  feel  as  though  we  were  observing  a  case  of 
progressive  paralysis  of  the  brain.  Hardly  a 
symptom  of  this  most  hideous  of  mental  dis- 
eases are  we  spared.  All  the  profane  language, 
all  the  sexual  excitement,  all  the  vile  halluci- 
nations characteristic  of  this  wretched  state, 
are  brought  before  us  ;  and,  in  addition  to  this, 


280    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

there  is  forced  upon  us  with  awful  distinctness 
a  sight  of  those  unspeakably  vulgar  surround- 
ings, the  bawling  and  carousing  restaurant  life 
of  "  respectable  "  society,  in  which  this  partic- 
ular victim  of  modern  city  profligacy  has  lost 
his  soul.  In  all  this  there  is  no  false  touch, 
there  is  no  exaggeration,  there  is  nothing  but 
truth  to  life ;  there  is  consequently,  technically 
speaking,  perfect  art.  But  I  must  confess,  if 
this  is  art,  I,  for  one,  prefer  a  life  in  the  desert, 
where  there  is  no  art,  but  plenty  of  air  and 
plenty  of  sky. 

And  yet  this  latest  drama  of  Hauptmann's, 
like  all  his  works,  has  something  of  that  in- 
spiring quality  which  only  true  genius  can  give. 
Here,  as  in  Fuhrmann  Henschel,  there  stands 
out  at  least  one  figure  which  compensates  us 
for  all  the  surrounding  vulgarity.  In  Fuhrmann 
Henschel  it  was  the  figure  of  the  honest  Silesian 
peasant-teamster,  craving  to  shake  off  the  feel- 
ing of  guilt,  craving  to  atone  for  the  violation 
of  a  promise  given  to  his  dying  wife,  and  thus 
standing  unwittingly  all  by  himself  as  the  in- 
stinctive upholder  of  a  moral  principle.  Here, 
it  is  the  brooding,  choleric  old  Michael  Kramer. 
Like  Henschel,  he  is  encompassed  by  nothing 
but  foulness  and  vice.    In  his  own  family  he 


CONTEMPORARY    LETTERS       281 

has  nothing  but  disappointment.  His  son,  from 
whose  artistic  genius  he  had  hoped  for  the  con- 
summation denied  to  himself,  he  sees  sink  into 
utter  moral  disintegration.  But  all  the  more 
steadfastly  does  the  old  man  cling  to  the  ideals 
of  his  art;  in  his  work  he  finds  his  religion;  his 
studio  becomes  to  him  the  holy  of  holies;  here 
he  consecrates  himself;  here  he  wrestles  and 
strives  through  lonely  hours,  lonely  days,  lonely 
years ;  here  it  becomes  clear  to  him  that  the  true 
artist  is  the  true  ascetic  and  the  true  anchorite. 
And  thus  he  acquires  the  moral  strength  which 
enables  him  to  bear  the  most  cruel  blow,  the  ig- 
nominious suicide  of  his  son,  not  only  without 
flinching,  but  with  true  elevation  and  grandeur 
of  soul.  Death  now  appears  to  him  as  the  great 
fulfiller  and  sanctifier ;  and,  as  he  stands  by 
the  outstretched  lifeless  form  of  his  son,  he 
sees  in  his  pale  face  a  glow  of  triumph  and 
attainment.  "  What  did  these  fools  know  of 
him  —  these  sticks  and  blocks  in  human  form? 
What  did  they  know  of  him  and  me  and  our 
struggles?  They  have  hunted  him  to  death; 
they  have  killed  him  like  a  dog.  That  is  past 
now.  'T  is  well  that  he  lies  there  ;  't  is  well ; 
't  is  well.  Let  me  tell  you,  Death  has  been 
slandered ;    that  is  the  greatest  wrong  in  the 


282    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

world.    Death  is  the  fairest  form  of  Life  ;  'tis 
the  masterwork  of  Love,  the  Eternal." 

Hauptmann's  art  seems  like  a  wondrous 
flower,  blossoming  in  lonely  beauty  upon  a 
hideous,  pestilential  pool.  Would  not  this 
flower  blossom  all  the  more  beautifully  if  it 
were  transplanted  to  a  healthy  soil  ?  Would 
not,  in  other  words,  the  poet  Hauptmann  ap- 
peal all  the  more  strongly  to  our  aesthetic 
instincts  if,  instead  of  the  abnormal  and  the 
diseased,  he  offered  us  types  of  the  univer- 
sally and  harmoniously  human  ? 

VI.    GERHART    HAUPTMANN's    DER    ARME 
HEINRICH    (DECEMBER,    I  Q02) 

The  friends  of  Gerhart  Hauptmann  have 
had  a  rather  arduous  task  during  the  last  few 
years  in  trying  to  reconcile  their  admiration  of 
his  genius  with  the  erratic  and  often  far  from 
agreeable  paths  which  he  latterly  chose  to 
follow.  With  every  new  production  of  his,  it 
appeared  less  likely  that  he  would  succeed  in 
attaining  the  high  ideals  of  art  held  out  in  his 
Versunkene  G/ocke,  and  more  and  more  the  fear 
seemed  justified  that  his  creative  power  would 
finally  succumb  under  the  laborious  effort  to 
copy  the  whimsical  appearances  and  outward 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       283 

paraphernalia  rather  than  the  essence  of  life. 
These  doubts  and  misgivings  have  now  happily- 
been  silenced;  for  at  last  the  poet  has  given 
us  a  work  of  art  which  appeals  to  the  eternally 
human,  which  touches  the  deepest  chords  of 
the  heart,  and  which  seems  destined  to  live, 
the  dramatic  poem,  Der  Arme  Heinricb. 

The  legend  of  Poor  Henry,  as  every- 
body knows,  was  first  treated  by  Hartman 
von  Aue  in  an  epic  poem  which  is  among  the 
few  real  masterpieces  of  mediaeval  literature. 
Hartman  tells  us  of  a  rich  and  powerful  lord, 
Heinrich  von  Aue,  who,  like  Job,  in  the  midst 
of  worldly  affluence  and  splendor,  is  visited  by 
a  terrible  affliction,  being  infected  with  leprosy ; 
who,  unlike  Job,  abandons  himself — for  a 
time  at  least  —  to  grief  and  hatred  and  rebel- 
liousness against  God;  but  is  finally  healed, 
both  bodily  and  mentally,  through  the  pure 
faith  and  self-surrender  of  a  simple  peasant 
girl.  The  various  stages  of  this  inner  conflict 
and  its  reconciliation  Hartman  brings  before  us 
with  a  charming  simplicity  and  artistic  grace. 
We  see  the  unfortunate  man  despairing  of  all 
help  because  he  has  been  told  that  he  can  be 
saved  only  by  the  blood  of  a  pure  maiden  who, 
of  her  own  free  will,  shall  die  for  him.    We 


284    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

see  him  retiring  from  the  world,  and  seeking 
refuge  in  the  lonely  farmhouse  of  one  of  his 
tenants.  We  see  him  here  attended  and  cared 
for  by  the  farmer's  little  daughter,  who,  al- 
though a  mere  child,  seems  to  divine  the  sick 
man's  thoughts  and  wishes,  and  is  so  insepar- 
able from  him  that  he  playfully  calls  her  "my 
little  wife."  We  see  the  child  lying  awake  at 
night  —  for  she  has  heard  of  the  fatal  condition 
of  his  recovery  —  weeping  and  grieving  for  the 
poor  sufferer,  until  she  suddenly  is  overjoyed 
and  transfigured  by  the  thought  that  it  is  her 
mission  to  save  him.  And  we  see  this  salva- 
tion finally  brought  about  through  a  change 
of  heart  in  Heinrich  himself.  Through  his  un- 
willingness to  accept  her  sacrificial  offering, 
through  his  decision  to  submit  henceforth 
trustfully  to  the  mysterious  ways  of  God, — 
in  other  words,  through  his  inner  transforma- 
tion and  renewal,  —  his  bodily  recovery  also  is 
achieved.  It  is  a  poem,  naive,  childlike,  and 
mediaeval  in  its  tone,  surrounded  by  an  atmo- 
sphere of  the  miraculous  and  the  wonderful ; 
at  the  same  time,  however,  breathing  a  spirit 
of  unconditional  trust  in  the  power  of  goodness 
and  in  the  promptings  of  the  inner  voice,  and 
in  so  far  essentially  modern. 


CONTEMPORARY    LETTERS       285 

Among  the  poets  of  our  own  time,  Long- 
fellow, if  I  am  not  mistaken,  is  the  only  one 
who  has  attempted,  previous  to  Hauptmann, 
to  revive  this  mediaeval  tale.  But  the  sweet 
and  graceful  singer  of  Hiawatha  was  not  at 
his  best  when  he  turned  to  this  subject,  and 
it  can  hardly  be  said  that  his  Golden  Legend 
reproduces  anything  but  the  outward  show 
of  mediaeval  life.  Of  religious  machinery  and 
spectacular  by-play  there  is  plenty  :  Lucifer 
and  his  host,  angelic  chants,  itinerant  preach- 
ers, Minnesingers,  reveling  friars,  devout  pil- 
grims, pretty  bits  of  romantic  landscape  after 
the  manner  of  Tieck,  even  a  whole  Nativity 
Play,  introducing  the  Wise  Men  of  the  East, 
the  Angels  of  the  Seven  Planets,  allegories 
of  Virtues,  Mary,  Jesus,  and  God  the  Father 
himself.  But  there  is  no  life  in  all  these  pic- 
turesque scenes  and  happenings,  and  the  prin- 
cipal figures,  Prince  Henry  and  Elsie,  are  no 
human  characters,  and  entirely  fail  to  appeal 
to  our  deeper  emotions.  It  is  just  here  that 
the  supreme  merit  of  Hauptmann's  drama  lies. 
Hauptmann  has  gone  to  the  root  of  the  sub- 
ject. He  has  stripped  the  mediaeval  tale  of 
what  is  merely  superficial  and  temporary  ;  he 
has  made  it  a  poetic  vessel  of  universal  human 


286    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

suffering  and  sympathy  ;  he  has  made  it  a  per- 
fect symbol  of  inner  regeneration ;  and  thus 
he  has  produced  a  work  of  art  which  will  stand 
by  the  side  of  Goethe's  Iphigenie  and  tell 
future  generations  of  the  heartburnings,  the 
bitter  struggles,  and  the  exultant  joys  of  a  man 
who,  perhaps  more  ardently  than  any  living 
poet,  is  striving  to  express  what  moves,  in- 
spires, and  presses  upon  our  age. 

It  would  be  a  futile  task  to  relate  in  detail 
by  what  means  Hauptmann  has  accomplished 
this  feat ;  for  the  play  is  so  much  a  drama  of 
the  inner  life  that  it  is  well-nigh  impossible  to 
reproduce  its  movement  by  paraphrasing  it — 
as  impossible  as  it  is  to  describe  a  symphony. 
A  few  remarks,  however,  about  the  leading 
motive  of  the  whole  may  be  helpful  to  the 
understanding. 

Heinrich  himself  is  conceived  by  Haupt- 
mann as  a  strong,  heroic  nature,  overflowing 
with  life,  burning  for  action.  In  years  gone 
by,  when  a  mere  youth,  he  would  often  be 
a-hunting  in  the  Black  Forest,  and  then  he 
would  spend  many  a  day  on  the  farm  of  his 
old  tenant  Gottfried,  whom  he  loved  like  a 
father,  and  with  whose  little  daughter  Otte- 
gebe,  then  hardly  out  of  her  leading-strings, 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       287 

he  would  play  and  sport,  taking  her  with  him 
on  his  horse  and  caressing  her  as  "  his  little 
wife."  Since  then  nine  years  have  passed.  In 
these  years  he  has  seen  and  experienced  much. 
He  has  taken  part  in  the  conflict  between 
Pope  Innocent  and  Emperor  Frederick  II; 
has,  for  his  allegiance  to  the  Emperor,  been 
laid  under  the  Papal  ban ;  has,  under  this 
ban,  taken  part  in  a  crusade  ;  and,  at  the  Em- 
peror's court  in  Palermo,  as  well  as  in  the  land 
of  the  Saracens,  he  has  led  a  life  of  worldly 
joy,  has  reveled  in  the  voluptuous  beauty  of 
the  Orient  and  imbibed  the  teachings  of  the 
Koran.  Now  he  returns  to  the  scenes  of  his 
youth  —  the  same  and  yet  another.  He  is 
still  impulsive ;  he  still  harbors  strong  desires 
and  aspirations  ;  but  his  hope  of  fulfillment  is 
gone ;  he  carries  the  worm  within  him  ;  he 
has  been  marked  by  God  ;  he  is  unclean,  a 
leper.  Thus  far,  he  imagines,  he  has  guarded 
the  terrible  secret  —  perhaps  he  hopes  to  guard 
it  forever ;  for  the  present,  he  craves  nothing 
but  solitude,  peace  ;  and  for  this  he  has  turned 
to  the  house  of  his  old  tenant.  That,  in  reality, 
his  disease  has  already  been  whispered  about, 
at  least  among  the  common  folk,  becomes  clear 
in  the  very  first  scene  of  the  drama,  when  one 


288     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

of  Heinrich's  servants,  terrorized  by  supersti- 
tious imaginings,  takes  precipitous  flight. 

While  Heinrich  for  the  time  seems  to  have 
forgotten  the  little  playmate  of  his  youth,  Ot- 
tegebe,  who  now  is  on  the  threshold  of  woman- 
hood, has  preserved  his  memory  well.  She  is 
a  sensitive,  shy,  visionary  being.  With  the 
peasant  lads  and  lasses  she  mingles  little  ;  her 
favorite  stay  is  with  Father  Benedict  in  his 
forest  hermitage,  and  what  effect  the  child  pro- 
duces upon  the  old  monk  is  seen  from  his 
words  :  — 

Kommt  sie,  wird  meine  dumpfe  Klause  helle, 

Mein  enges  Waldkapellchen  weit  und  gross, 

Der  Heiland  atmet  und  Maria  lacht, 

Und  ich,  von  meiner  Siinden  Ueberlast 

Sonst  fast  erdriickt,  kann  mich  vom  Boden  heben, 

Und  Gott,  entsiihnt,  ins  giitige  Antlitz  sehn. 

Through  the  friar,  she  has  been  filled  with 
mystic  forebodings  of  the  approaching  Judg- 
ment Day;  she  revels  in  depicting  to  herself 
the  sinfulness  of  the  world ;  the  Black  Death 
and  the  scourge  of  leprosy  are,  to  her,  visible 
signs  of  God's  wrath,  and  every  leper's  body 
a  mirrored  image  of  poisoned  Christendom. 
But  she  also  revels  in  the  Christian  mystery 
of  atonement,  in  the  saving  power  of  innocent 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       289 

blood  voluntarily  shed,  and  in  its  cleansing 
effect  upon  sin  and  disease.  What  wonder 
that,  when  she  comes  to  know  what  frightful 
secret  has  brought  Heinrich  to  her  father's 
house,  she  should  be  possessed  by  the  idea  of 
redeeming  him  by  her  own  death  ? 

These,  then,  are  the  two  characters  between 
whom  there  arises  a  tragic  conflict — a  conflict 
of  compassion  and  despair,  of  woman's  de- 
sire for  self-sacrifice  and  man's  determination 
to  struggle  alone  —  until  finally  love,  uncon- 
ditional, all-embracing,  divine  love,  subdues 
both  man  and  woman,  and  dissolves  the  con- 
flict into  joyful  harmony.  That  Ottegebe  from 
the  very  first  feels  something  more  than  com- 
passion for  Heinrich  —  that,  unknown  to  her- 
self, she  loves  him  —  we  divine  from  the  out- 
set. Why  else  should  she  tremble  whenever 
he  speaks  to  her?  Why  should  she  tear  the 
ribbon  which  she  had  put  on  in  his  honor, 
from  her  hair  as  soon  as  attention  is  drawn  to 
it  ?  But  as  yet  her  love  is  slumbering ;  it  is 
overshadowed  by  the  Christian  desire  to  atone, 
to  rescue,  and  by  the  Christian  longing  for  the 
crown  of  spiritual  reward.  Heinrich,  on  his 
part,  has  no  other  feeling  for  her  except  that 
of  curious  wonder  at  her  devoted  service  :  he 


290    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

is  too  much  absorbed  with  himself  and  his 
frightful  fate  to  have  thoughts  of  anything  else. 
It  is  wonderful  to  see  how  it  is  just  this  fright- 
ful fate  of  his,  the  gradual  unfolding  of  his 
terrible  doom,  which  draws  this  man  and  this 
woman  together,  which  opens  their  hearts  to 
each  other,  and  thus  brings  salvation  and  life 
to  both. 

The  climax  of  the  drama  is  reached  in  the 
third  and  fourth  acts,  when  Heinrich,  after 
having  made  known  the  nature  of  his  disease, 
has  fled  to  the  woods  and  is  hiding  there  like 
a  hunted  beast,  pursued  by  the  execrations 
and  curses  of  the  populace.  He  now  seems  to 
have  risen  to  colossal  proportions.  Misery  has 
stripped  him  of  everything  that  is  weak  and 
small.  He  has  now  penetrated  to  the  bottom 
of  things;  he  has  become  knowing;  he  has 
found  out  that  life  is  a  dungeon,  that  death  is 
freedom  ;  he  scorns  as  folly  the  report,  brought 
to  him  by  old  Gottfried,  that  his  daughter  is 
determined  to  die  for  him  at  the  hands  of  the 
physician  of  Salerno  ;  he  chases  herself  away 
with  cursing  and  stones  when  she  ventures 
into  his  wilderness  ;  and  in  grim  frenzy  he  di- 
verts himself  by  digging  his  own  grave.  These 
moments,  however,  are  followed  by  others  in 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       291 

which  the  mere  craving  for  existence  gets  the 
better  of  him.  In  such  moments  he  will  prowl 
about,  like  a  beast  of  prey,  in  the  vicinity  of 
Gottfried's  house,  or  wherever  he  imagines 
Ottegebe  to  be,  crouch  on  the  ground,  creep 
through  the  thicket,  only  to  get  a  glimpse  of 
her  and  to  feed  on  the  thought  of  being  saved 
by  her.  And  at  last,  in  one  such  moment  of 
highest  transport  of  despair,  when  exhausted 
and  fainting  he  has  sunk  to  the  ground,  Otte- 
gebe is  at  his  side,  and  in  rapturous  delight 
presses  a  fervent  kiss  upon  his  forehead. 

Inexpressibly  sweet  is  the  contrast  formed 
by  the  last  act  with  these  wild  and  frenzied  hap- 
penings. Heinrich  has  returned  with  Ottegebe 
to  his  castle.  Instinctively,  even  against  his 
will,  had  he  followed  her  to  Salerno.  Travel- 
ing by  the  side  of  his  little  saint,  he  had  for 
the  first  time  felt  his  heart  secure  from  the  pur- 
suit of  the  demons ;  a  new  life  had  been  born 
within  him,  joy  and  hope  had  returned  ;  and 
at  last,  at  the  height  of  the  catastrophe,  when 
the  sacrificial  act  was  about  to  be  performed, 
Love  had  descended  upon  him  and  bidden  him 
prevent  the  execution  —  and  he  was  healed 

Da  traf  der  dritte  Strahl  der  Gnade  mich  : 
Das  Wunder  war  vollbracht,  ich  war  genesen ! 


292     GERMAN  IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

Hartmann,  glcichwie  ein  Korper  ohne  Herz, 

Ein  Golem,  eines  Zauberer's  Gebilde, 

Doch  keines  Gottes  —  thonern  oder  auch 

Aus  Stein,  oder  aus  Erz  —  bist  du,  solange  nicht 

Der  reine,  grade,  ungebrochne  Strom 

Der  Gottheit  eine  Bahn  sich  hat  gebrochen 

In  die  geheimnisvolle  Kapsel,  die 

Das  echte  Schopfungs-Wunder  uns  verschliesst  : 

Dann  erst  durchdringt  dich  Leben.    Schrankenlos 

Dehnt  sich  das  Himmlische  aus  deiner  Brust, 

Mit  Glanz  durchschlagend  deines  Kerkers  Wande, 

Erlosend  und  auflosend —  dich!  die  Welt! 

In  das  urewige  Liebes-Element. 

While  Heinrich  from  this  moment  on  is  in 
the  full  possession  of  his  powers,  joyful,  daring, 
active  as  of  old,  Ottegebe  has  remained  as  in 
a  stupor.  She  has  not  fulfilled  her  mission, 
she  has  not  won  the  heavenly  crown  !  She,  too, 
has  through  suffering  become  knowing.  She 
knows  now  that  she  loves  Heinrich,  but  it 
seems  to  her  an  unholy  love,  an  earthly  desire. 
She,  the  bride  of  Heaven,  has  fallen  a  victim 
to  the  powers  of  darkness.  What  is  there  left 
to  her  but  death?  So,  as  in  Goethe's  Ip hig en ie> 
there  seems  to  arise  a  new  conflict  after  the 
rounding  out  of  the  main  theme.  But,  hap- 
pily, this  conflict  is  only  a  transient  clouding 
of  the  radiance  that  is  spread  over  these  clos- 


CONTEMPORARY    LETTERS       293 

ing  scenes.  For  human  love  proves  its  divine- 
ness,  in  spite  of  these  ecclesiastical  scruples ; 
and  when  Heinrich,  at  the  wedding  ceremony, 
presses  Ottegebe  passionately  to  his  breast, 
she  whispers  joyfully  :  — 

"  Heinrich  !  —  Nun  sterb'  ich  doch  den  siissen  Tod  !" 

There  are  few  works  in  the  world's  litera- 
ture that  aim  higher  than  this  sweet  and  noble 
poem.  In  depth  of  feeling,  in  simplicity  of 
structure,  in  beauty  of  language,  in  strength  of 
character-drawing,  in  spiritual  import,  it  sur- 
passes to  my  mind  everything  that  has  come 
from  the  hand  of  living  dramatists.  Hail  to 
the  poet  who,  disdaining  ephemeral  effects  or 
the  applause  of  the  crowd,  has  clung  to  that 
which  is  for  the  few  of  all  ages,  and  has  thus 
added  a  new  treasure  to  the  spiritual  posses- 
sions of  mankind. 

VII.    THE    STRUGGLE    FOR    INDIVIDUALITY    ON 
THE    GERMAN    STAGE    (FEBRUARY,     I9O2) 

The  German  society  drama  of  the  present 
day  shows  a  curious  mixture  of  high  aspirations 
and  imperfect  fulfillment,  of  noble  conceptions 
and  brutal  effects,  of  an  ardent  desire  for 
truth,  freedom,  nature,  and  of  a  tame  subser- 


294    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

vience  to  conventional  devices  and  artificial 
sentiment.  In  the  early  nineties,  when  the 
first  powerful  productions  of  Sudermann  and 
Hauptmann  filled  the  air  with  joyous  echoes 
of  the  striving  for  a  heightened  existence  both 
of  the  individual  and  of  society,  we  dreamed 
of  a  new  classic  era  of  dramatic  literature  close 
at  hand.  We  hoped  that  the  young  German 
writers  who  so  boldly  and  with  such  earnest 
conviction  had  taken  up  the  gospel  of  Ibsen, 
Bjornson,  and  Tolstoi,  would  soon  rise  to  the 
full  height  of  their  masters,  or  perhaps  even 
surpass  them.  For  it  seemed  as  though  there 
were  something  in  these  young  writers,  a  cer- 
tain sense  of  measure  and  tradition,  a  certain 
reverence  for  the  human  past,  that  in  all  their 
tumultuous  strivings  would  keep  them  on  the 
path  of  true  art  and  preserve  them  from  the 
merely  volcanic,  which,  especially  in  the  Scan- 
dinavian writers,  not  infrequently  destroys  the 
pure  aesthetic  enjoyment  of  modern  poetry. 

These  hopes,  if  I  may  be  permitted  to  give 
to  my  own  experience  a  somewhat  wider  ap- 
plication, have  been  sadly  disappointed.  In- 
stead of  pressing  on  toward  the  goal  of  an  art 
embodying  in  vigorous,  free,  and  impressive 
types  the  ideals  of  modern  humanity,  and  thus 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       295 

holding  up  before  the  eyes  of  the  present  the 
life  that  is  to  come,  the  German  dramatists,  or 
most  of  them  at  least,  have  again  fallen  back 
to  that  position  from  which  the  whole  move- 
ment of  "Youngest  Germany"  started  some 
fifteen  years  ago,  —  the  position  of  an  essen- 
tially negative  and  pessimistic  analysis  and 
arraignment  of  existing  conditions.  That  in 
taking  this  stand  they  give  expression  to  a 
large  and  important  part  of  the  intellectual 
life  of  modern  Germany,  can  hardly  be  denied; 
for  the  natural  counterpart  of  the  reigning  im- 
perialism and  officialdom  has  been  the  growth 
of  a  public  opinion  so  peevishly  sensitive  to 
even  the  slightest  encroachments  on  personal 
rights,  so  eagerly  insisting  on  free  inquiry,  so 
boldly  —  and  often  with  such  bitter  sarcasm  — 
exerting  its  function  of  a  searching  criticism  of 
public  affairs,  as  is  scarcely  to  be  found  in 
countries  where  individual  liberty  is  more  firmly 
guarded.  In  no  other  country,  for  instance, 
would  the  artistic  views  of  the  chief  of  state 
have  aroused  such  violent  antagonism,  or  would 
his  efforts  at  putting  these  views  into  practice 
have  been  received  with  such  a  flood  of  biting 
satire,  as  was  the  case  with  the  Emperor's  re- 
cent utterances  on  art  addressed  to  the  sculp- 


296    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

tors  of  his  monumental  gifts  to  the  citv  of 
Berlin.  Nor  is  it  likely  that  the  appointment 
of  a  Catholic  professor  of  history  beside  that 
of  a  Protestant  —  which  recently  took  place  at 
the  University  of  Strassburg  —  would  in  any 
other  country  have  led  to  such  a  storm  of  in- 
dignation, such  protestations  of  principle,  such 
abuse  of  government  interference  with  profes- 
sorial standards  of  impartial  inquiry,  as  shook 
German  academic  circles  some  weeks  ago. 

As  a  reflex,  then,  of  public  affairs,  the  Ger- 
man drama  of  the  last  few  seasons,  disappoint- 
ing as  it  is  when  considered  from  the  point 
of  view  of  ideal  art,  is  still  an  extremely  in- 
structive phenomenon.  The  clash  between  the 
individual  and  society,  which,  in  one  form  or 
another,  may  be  said  to  underlie  all  tragic 
situations  in  real  life  as  well  as  in  art,  has  re- 
ceived in  the  German  drama  even  of  very  recent 
years  some  new  and  interesting  impersona- 
tions. What  seems  to  me  regrettable  is,  that 
in  hardly  any  of  these  recent  dramas  is  there 
a  ray  of  hope,  a  suggestion  of  a  possible  de- 
livery from  the  social  conflict  except  by  self- 
destruction  of  the  individual  ;  that,  on  the 
contrary,  this  self-destruction  is  constantly  be- 
ing insisted  upon  in  these  dramas  as  the  only 


CONTEMPORARY    LETTERS       297 

and  as  a  truly  heroic  solution,  even  where  there 
seems  not  the  slightest  necessity  for  it,  since 
a  little  more  common  sense  and  large-minded- 
ness  and  a  little  less  willfulness  and  sentimen- 
tality would  have  obviated  all  difficulties. 

A  striking  illustration  of  this  drift  towards 
the  needlessly  tragic  and  its  painful  results  is 
a  drama  which  is  at  present  holding  a  promi- 
nent place  in  the  repertory  of  almost  every 
German  theatre;  which,  moreover,  through  the 
award  of  the  Grillparzer  prize  and  a  nearly 
unanimous  approval  of  the  leading  critical  re- 
views, has  obtained  the  highest  literary  dis- 
tinction. I  refer  to  Otto  Erich  Hartleben's 
Rosenmontag.  The  hero  of  this  drama  is  a 
Prussian  officer  who  falls  a  victim  to  the 
petty  prejudices  and  hollow  ambitions  of  caste. 
He  is  a  dreamer,  an  idealist,  a  man  to  whom 
purity  of  heart  is  the  highest  demand  of  life. 
He  has  fallen  in  love  with  a  simple  burgher 
maiden,  without  realizing  that,  as  long  as  he 
remains  an  officer,  there  can  be  no  question 
of  marriage  with  this  girl.  Two  of  his  com- 
rades, cousins  of  his,  in  whom  the  sense  of 
family  pride  and  social  standing  seems  to  have 
absorbed  every  other  intellectual  or  emotional 
faculty,  take  it  upon  themselves  to  save  him 


298    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

from  embarrassing  situations  by  acting  the 
part  of  his  Fate.  First  they  separate  him  from 
the  girl  by  bringing  it  about  that  he  is  for  a 
time  detached  to  another  garrison.  In  leav- 
ing, he  intrusts  his  love  to  their  protection. 
This  confidence  they  abuse  by  persuading  the 
girl  that  he  has  become  engaged  to  another, 
while  at  the  same  time  representing  to  him 
that  his  love  has  broken  her  faith.  The  news 
of  her  alleged  treachery  prostrates  him  physi- 
cally as  well  as  mentally,  and  when,  after  a 
year  of  illness  and  agony,  he  actually  becomes 
engaged  to  a  rich  society  girl,  this  is  clearly 
a  symptom  of  his  shattered  ideals.  Thus  he 
returns  to  his  old  regiment,  only  to  find  out 
what  a  shameful  trick  has  been  played  upon 
him.  Now  he  is  beside  himself  with  rage  and 
indignation.  He  has  a  violent  rupture  with 
his  comrades ;  he  defies  the  military  code  of 
honor ;  he  takes  his  old  love  back,  and,  after 
a  few  days'  reveling  in  bliss,  ends  his  life  to- 
gether with  hers. 

Hackneyed  and  crude  as  this  plot  is,  I  am 
far  from  denying  that  it  is  worked  out  with 
unusual  cleverness  and  brilliancy  of  dramatic 
invention.  The  officers'  life,  with  its  racy, 
frivolous  jargon,  its  well-mannered  and  well- 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       299 

meaning  inanity,  with  its  jolly  comradeship  and 
its  brutal  conception  of  woman,  is  portrayed 
here  with  astonishing  vividness  and  truthful- 
ness. Although  during  the  whole  play  we  do 
not  get  beyond  the  limits  of  the  barracks  or 
the  officers'  casino,  the  only  woman  character 
of  the  plot  being  the  deserted  girl,  there  is  not 
a  moment  of  dullness  or  monotony  in  it.  As 
an  historical  document,  as  a  comprehensive 
and  cutting  satire  on  military  life  in  Germany 
at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  this 
drama  is  undoubtedly  a  notable  achievement, 
and  will  stand  in  literary  history  by  the  side 
of  such  Storm-and-Stress  productions  as  Wag- 
ner's Die  Kinder mbrder in  or  Lenz's  Die  Sol- 
daten.  All  the  more  disappointing  is  it  that 
the  author,  who  knew  so  well  how  to  casti- 
gate social  foibles  and  depravities,  should  not 
have  been  happier  in  depicting  genuine  human 
feeling,  —  that  he  should  not  have  been  able 
to  create  a  hero  capable  of  something  besides 
ranting  and  fuming  against  military  conven- 
tionalities and  then  blowing  his  brains  out. 
There  is  really  not  the  slightest  reason  in  the 
world  why  this  man,  after  he  has  found  out 
that  his  love  always  has  been  and  still  is  faith- 
ful to  him,  should  not  with  a  light  heart  bid 


300    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

good-by  to  all  these  glittering  frivolities,  and 
begin,  together  with  the  woman  of  his  choice, 
a  new,  serious,  and  happy  life.  Is  an  officer's 
life,  then,  everything,  even  in  Germany  ?  Is 
the  only  alternative  left  to  this  man  really 
either  to  stifle  the  best  instincts  of  his  being 
or  to  follow  the  contemptuous  advice  of  a 
comrade  of  his,  "  Then  go  to  America  and 
turn  waiter "  ?  And  even  this  latter  choice, 
would  it  not  have  been  manlier  and  more 
genuinely  human  than  this  absurd  refuge  in 
the  Nothing?  How  differently  has  Ibsen, 
in  his  Enemy  of  the  People,  tackled  a  similar 
problem  !  How  radiant  and  triumphant  does 
the  personality,  in  the  midst  of  defeat,  here 
stand  out  at  the  end  against  the  unreasoning 
and  unfeeling  herd  of  the  "  solid  majority  "  ! 
In  Hartleben's  play,  in  spite  of  all  the  lofty 
talk  and  noble  sentiment,  there  is  at  the  end 
nothing  left  but  moral  numbness  and  submis- 
sion to  the  dictates  of  an  artificial  etiquette. 

I  cannot  bring  myself  to  speak  at  length 
of  a  recent  production  of  Sudermann's,  which 
was  first  put  on  the  boards  of  the  Deutsches 
Theater  last  week,  under  the  curious  mis- 
nomer of  Es  lebe  das  Leben  !  For  nothing 
could  be  more  devoid  of  the  real  feelings  for 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       301 

which  life  stands  than  this  painfully  thought- 
out  parody  of  life ;  and  it  is  truly  saddening 
that  a  man  who  began  his  literary  career  in 
accents  that  reminded  one  of  the  young  Schil- 
ler, who,  even  in  his  Johannes  and  Die  drei 
Reiherfedern^  seemed  to  strive  after  the  heights 
of  life,  should  now  stoop  to  the  pseudo- 
tragedy  of  social  scandals  not  a  whit  more  up- 
lifting or  less  mawkishly  sentimental  than  the 
much-abused  plays  of  Kotzebue  or  Paul  Lin- 
dau.  What  leads  me  to  mention  this  doleful 
production  here  is  the  fact  that  it  is  another 
flagrant  instance  of  that  lack  of  a  bold  and 
consistent  personality,  along  with  and  in  spite 
of  a  certain  attitude  of  protest  against  social 
tyranny,  which  seems  to  me  responsible  for 
the  ultimate  artistic  failure  of  Hartleben's 
Rosenmontag. 

In  Sudermann's  play  also  the  hero,  or 
rather  the  heroine,  sacrifices  herself  without 
any  sufficient  reason,  nay,  even  without  any 
intelligible  purpose.  She  sacrifices  herself,  she 
thinks,  in  order  to  save  the  life  of  her  lover, 
with  whom  fifteen  years  ago  she  had  trans- 
gressed her  marriage  vows,  and  who  since 
then  had  lived  unsuspected  in  ideal  friendship 
with  herself  and  in  close  comradeship  with  her 


302    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

husband,  until  a  sudden  exposure  brings  the 
two  men  into  irreconcilable  conflict.  But  how 
is  it  possible  to  think  that  this  man,  after  her 
self-destruction,  should  take  up  life  in  the 
sense  she  wishes  him  ;  namely,  as  a  champion 
of  the  Conservative  cause  against  the  destruc- 
tive tendencies  of  Social  Democracy,  since, 
as  he  himself  expresses  it  epigrammatically, 
he  "  must  live  on  because  he  is  dead  "  ?  She 
sacrifices  herself  also,  she  thinks,  in  order  to 
rescue  her  husband  from  an  impossible  situa- 
tion, apparently  without  realizing  how  little 
this  sacrifice  can  do  to  atone  for  the  pro- 
tracted falsehood  and  lie  of  fifteen  years. 
Finally,  she  sacrifices  herself  in  order  to  keep 
the  Conservative  party  from  the  scandal  and 
confusion  which  would  arise  from  an  open 
conflict  between  the  two  men,  both  pillars  of 
law  and  order;  and  again  she  seems  to  be  en- 
tirely blind  to  the  fact  that  nothing  will  more 
clearly  reveal  the  "  skeleton  in  the  closet "  of 
the  Conservative  party,  and  more  directly  and 
irretrievably  hurt  the  cause  of  law  and  order, 
than  her  own  suicide. 

In  short,  the  motives  which  actuate  the 
events  in  this  play  are  artificial  to  the  last 
degree;  and  while  there  runs  a  hidden  protest 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       303 

through  it  against  the  suppression  of  indi- 
viduality demanded  by  the  complicated  moral 
code  of  the  modern  state,  there  appears  not  a 
single  character  in  it  who  dares  to  be  truly 
himself,  and  most  of  the  characters  (to  borrow 
one  of  the  author's  own  phrases)  seem  to  be 
living  in  a  prison  which  they  themselves 
guard.  A  sorry  turn,  indeed,  to  be  taken  by 
the  author  of  Heimat. 

It  would  be  superfluous  to  dwell  on  other 
dramas  of  recent  date,  such  as  Philippi's  Das 
grosse  Licht  and  Wohlthdter  der  Menschheit, 
which  show  this  same  curious  mixture  of  in- 
dividualistic leanings  on  the  one  hand  and 
submission  to  social  convention  on  the  other. 
It  is,  however,  worthy  of  mention,  since  it  is 
characteristic  of  the  whole  state  of  contem- 
porary German  culture,  that  the  only  play 
of  the  last  few  years  in  which  a  powerful 
personality  successfully  asserts  itself,  is  an  edu- 
cational play,  —  Otto  Ernst's  comedy,  Flachs- 
mann  als  Erzieher,  a  brave,  timely,  and  amus- 
ing plea  for  individuality  and  common  sense 
in  the  instruction  of  children.  The  way  in 
which  the  ideas  of  Pestalozzi  and  Froebel 
are  here  given  form  in  an  inspired  young 
teacher  who  fights  to  the  end  and   maintains 


3o4    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

his  ideals  in  spite  of  endless  intrigue,  slander, 
and  malicious  machinations  on  the  part  of  his 
colleagues  and  superiors,  is  truly  delightful ; 
and  the  only  pity  is  that  the  sphere  of  action 
in  this  piece  is  too  narrow  to  give  room  for  a 
really  free  and  large  artistic  movement. 

When  will  the  German  society  drama  fulfill 
the  prophetic  message  of  fifteen  years  ago,  free 
itself  from  the  shackles  of  sentimentality  and 
conventional  formality,  and  rise  to  a  really 
human  representation  of  the  great  conflicts  of 
modern  life?  Bjornson's  Beyond  Our  Strength, 
which  is  being  performed  with  such  masterly 
skill  in  all  the  great  German  theatres,  should 
point  the  way  toward  this  goal. 

viii.  widmann's  der  heilige  und  die  tiere 
(may,   1906) 

The  English-speaking  world  is  not  suffi- 
ciently aware,  I  think,  of  the  fact  that  German 
literature  is  in  the  midst  of  a  great  revival.  To 
be  sure,  a  few  names,  such  as  Hauptmann  and 
Sudermann,  are  accepted  as  newspaper  celeb- 
rities, about  whom  it  is  well  to  have,  or  at 
least  to  express,  opinions.  For  the  rest,  one 
does  not  expect  much  of  mental  stimulus  or 
spiritual  enlightenment  from  German  novel- 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       305 

ists,  dramatists,  or  poets  of  to-day.  Among  the 
causes  which  account  for  this  indifference  of 
other  nations  toward  modern  German  litera- 
ture, I  am  inclined  to  consider  the  negative 
tendency  of  contemporary  German  journalism 
as  the  most  potent  one.  In  France  or  Eng- 
land, criticism  in  the  main  is  a  help  to  pro- 
duction. By  setting  forth  what  is  valuable  or 
important  in  the  literary  activity  of  the  day, 
French  and  English  critics,  as  a  class,  enable 
the  foreign  public  to  arrive  at  a  tolerably  just 
view  of  the  literary  progress  of  their  respective 
countries.  The  German  press,  with  a  few  ex- 
ceptions, is  dominated  by  a  spirit  of  factional 
acrimoniousness  and  fault-finding.  The  con- 
sciousness that  it  is  the  main  office  of  criticism 
to  interpret,  to  reproduce  the  mood  and  feel- 
ings from  which  sprang  the  productions  of 
creative  fancy,  seems  almost  entirely  lost.  Still 
less  is  there  to  be  seen  a  widely  spread  desire 
or  even  willingness  by  fairness  and  justice  of 
interpretation  to  uphold  national  dignity  and 
to  make  propaganda  for  the  cause  of  German 
literature  abroad.  Most  of  the  journalistic  re- 
viewers seem  to  consider  authors  as  fair  game 
for  their  own  caprice.  To  protest,  to  belittle, 
to  ignore,  to  ridicule,  to  startle  by  sensational 


306    GERMAN    IDEALS   OF   TO-DAY 

epigrams  or  grandiloquent  phrases,  has  come  to 
be  the  prevailing  note  of  critical  comment.  So 
that,  if  one  were  to  go  by  the  conflicting  and 
distorted  testimony  of  German  newspaper  crit- 
icism, the  condition  of  contemporary  German 
literature  would  seem  to  be  most  disheartening 
and  gloomy. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  German  literary  life  of 
to-day  is  in  a  greater  ferment  than  that  of  per- 
haps any  other  country.  Indeed,  it  is  almost 
impossible  to  take  up  a  new  German  drama  or 
a  German  book  of  verse  or  fiction,  without 
being  struck  with  symptoms  of  an  ascending 
movement  of  emotional  forces,  a  quickened 
pulsation  of  spiritual  energy,  a  heightened 
sense  of  the  dignity  of  existence,  a  wider  sym- 
pathy with  humanity  in  all  its  forms,  a  firmer 
grasp  of  the  fundamental  problems  of  morality, 
in  short  with  incontestable  indications  that  the 
same  eagerness  and  restless  activity  which  are 
playing  such  an  important  part  in  reconstruct- 
ing German  politics,  industry,  and  scientific 
investigation,  are  also  at  work  in  reshaping 
German  literature. 

I  wish  to  call  attention  to  a  writer  who, 
living  far  removed  from  the  great  intellec- 
tual centres  of  modern  Germany,  and  holding 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       307 

himself  aloof  from  the  strife  of  critics  and  the 
noise  of  the  literary  mart,  has  nevertheless  — 
or,  perhaps,  for  that  very  reason  —  given  us 
some  of  the  finest  artistic  symbols  of  modern 
German  thought  that  we  possess :  the  Swiss 
poet,  Joseph  Victor  Widmann.  Widmann  is 
not  any  longer  a  novice  of  the  craft ;  standing 
in  his  sixty-fourth  year,  he  may  look  back 
upon  a  long  list  of  achievements.  He  has 
written  essays,  sketches  of  travel,  epics,  nov- 
els, dramas,  graceful  in  form  and  replete  with 
ideas.  Besides,  as  literary  editor  of  the  leading 
Swiss  paper,  the  Bernese  Bund,  he  has  com- 
mented for  now  tens  of  years,  week  in  and 
week  out,  with  singular  fairness  and  breadth 
of  view,  on  all  the  important  manifestations  of 
the  new  life  in  German  letters  and  art.  And 
in  all  this  he  has  revealed  a  very  unusual  per- 
sonality, keenness  of  observation,  wealth  of 
fancy,  spiritual  earnestness  and  insight,  and 
above  all,  a  most  delightful  sense  of  humor  — 
the  true  humor  which  springs  from  a  warm 
heart  for  all  that  is  genuine  and  fine,  in  how- 
ever humble  a  form  it  may  appear,  and  which 
detects  the  false  and  the  hollow  even  under  its 
most  glittering  guise. 

The  two  works  by  which,  I  believe,  Wid- 


308    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

mann  will  speak  to  posterity  are  the  Maikd- 
ferkomoedie  and  Der  Heilige  und  die  Tiere. 
It  is  not  easy  to  classify  these  works  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  accepted  standards  of  lit- 
erary nomenclature.  Indeed,  they  defy,  both 
in  form  and  in  matter,  the  traditional  concep- 
tions of  art.  They  combine  dramatic  dialogue, 
epic  narrative,  and  lyric  effusions;  they  are 
satirical  and  rhapsodic,  fantastic  and  realis- 
tic, far  removed  from  our  daily  life  and  yet 
entirely  up  to  date.  They  seem  to  be  a  capri- 
cious pot-pourri  of  tragedy  and  farce,  of 
mysticism  and  rationalism,  and  yet  they  are 
held  together  by  a  wonderful  artistic  harmony. 
They  contain  elements  on  the  one  hand  of 
the  animal  lore  of  primitive  peoples,  on  the 
other  of  the  mediaeval  miracle  plays ;  and  yet 
they  are  deeply  poetic  symbols  of  the  mod- 
ern view  of  life.  They  are  indeed  sui  generis, 
a  new  phenomenon  on  the  literary  horizon, 
a  new  kind  of  poetic  creation ;  and  aesthetic 
theory  will  have  to  enlarge  its  classifications 
in  order  to  find  room  for  them. 

The  Maikaferkomoedie,  the  earlier  work  of 
the  two,  is,  in  spite  of  its  name,  a  tragedy, 
of  insect  life,  and  at  the  same  time  an  allegory 
of  human  existence  with  its  ephemeral  joys, 


CONTEMPORARY    LETTERS       309 

its  eternal  longings,  and  its  endless  suffering. 
Astounding  is  the  art  by  which  the  poet  suc- 
ceeds in  bringing  this  tiny  world  of  insects 
within  the  range  of  our  own  feelings  and  as- 
pirations, so  that  we  cannot  help  thinking  of 
these  beetles  and  worms  as  being  endowed 
with  human  intellect  and  emotions,  and  are 
not  in  the  least  surprised  to  hear  of  them  as 
striving,  like  ourselves,  for  higher  forms  of 
existence.  This  striving  forms,  indeed,  the 
starting-point  of  the  plot.  It  is  early  spring; 
below  the  surface  of  the  earth  as  well  as  above 
a  new  life  is  throbbing  ;  it  is  stirring  also 
among  the  larvae  of  the  May-beetles  that  lie 
imbedded  under  the  turf.  A  gospel  has  spread 
among  them  of  a  country  of  marvelous  beauty, 
of  regions  of  eternal  light  and  joy  stretching 
out  above  the  darkness  of  the  underground 
world  that  encompasses  them;  and  they  are 
thrilled  by  the  hope  that  it  is  for  them  to  win 
this  land  of  promise.  To  be  sure,  there  are 
skeptics  in  their  midst  who  doubt  this  mes- 
sage, who  claim  to  know  of  the  dangers,  the 
cruelty,  and  the  horrors  of  this  upper  world, 
and  who  raise  their  voice  of  warning  against 
the  attempt  to  reach  it.  But  these  voices  are 
drowned   in  the  general   enthusiasm,   in   the 


3io     GERMAN  IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

wave  of  religious  craze  that  has  seized  the 
masses  as  well  as  their  leaders.  The  king,  a 
romantic,  mystically  inclined  idealist,  calls 
upon  his  people  to  gather  around  him  ;  a  uni- 
versal movement  forward  and  upward  is  un- 
dertaken, the  crust  of  the  earth  is  broken,  the 
surface  is  reached,  and  now  the  little  army 
lifts  its  wings  to  fly  toward  the  joys  of  light. 

It  may  be  imagined  what  their  fate  is.  How 
they  are  caught  and  tortured  by  boys  who 
amuse  themselves  by  inflicting  pain  upon 
helpless  animals  ;  how  they  are  chased  and 
eaten  by  birds ;  how  they  are  persecuted  by 
farmers  who  guard  their  orchards  and  gardens 
against  them;  how  they  enjoy  swarming  and 
buzzing  during  a  few  brief  summer  nights ; 
how  they  burn  to  death  by  flying  into  the  fire; 
how  they  are  crushed  under  wagon  wheels  and 
horses'  hoofs,  and  how,  at  last,  in  the  autumn 
their  benumbed,  half-lifeless  little  bodies  lie 
scattered  over  the  fields  like  the  bodies  of 
fallen  heroes,  until  either  the  rain  or  the  frost 
makes  an  end  of  them  —  all  this  is  brought 
before  us  with  a  truly  marvelous  art,  with  a 
mixture  of  pathos  and  pity  and  humor  which 
makes  this  story  of  insect  life  a  true  counter- 
part to  the  lot  of  human  kind. 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       311 

Deeply  poetic  and  full  of  meaning  as  is  the 
Maikdferkomoedie,  it  cannot  be  compared  in 
sweep  and  significance  of  thought  with  Wid- 
mann's  latest  work,  Christ  in  the  Wilderness^ 
as  its  curious  title,  Der  Heilige  und  die  Tiere, 
may  perhaps  be  paraphrased.  The  motto 
taken  from  the  first  chapter  of  Mark : 
"  And  he  was  in  the  wilderness  forty  days, 
tempted  of  Satan,  and  was  with  the  wild 
beasts ;  and  the  angels  ministered  unto  him," 
indicates  that  here  again  the  animal  world  with 
its  cruelty,  its  blind  desires,  and  its  dumb  suf- 
fering forms  the  background  of  the  action, 
but  it  also  leads  us  to  look  forward  to  human 
grappling  with  the  deepest  problems  of  exis- 
tence, to  a  battle  with  evil  and  sin,  and  to  a 
note  of  redemption  and  spiritual  triumph. 
And  this  hope  is  by  no  means  disappointed 
by  the  poem  itself. 

It  opens  with  a  prelude  of  exquisite  humor 
and  poetic  power,  transporting  us  into  the 
midst  of  the  philosophical  and  theological  con- 
troversies of  to-day.  Two  theological  students 
are  tramping  in  the  Black  Forest.  One  of  them 
quotes  with  much  moral  indignation  a  passage 
from  Nietzsche  :  "  God  is  dead  ;  but,  such  as 
human  kind  is  (cf.  sheep  kind),  there  will  per- 


3i2    GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

haps  for  thousands  of  years  continue  to  exist 
caverns  in  which  his  shade  will  be  worshiped. 
And  we,  we  must  conquer  even  his  shade." 
To  his  comrade  this  passage  does  not  seem  so 
very  blasphemous  ;  he  is  inclined  to  think  that 
a  Godless,  or  rather  a  God-free  Christianity 
may  be  destined  to  be  the  religion  of  the  fu- 
ture ;  sympathy  with  all  forms  of  life,  whether 
human  or  animal  or  vegetable,  seems  to  him 
a  much  more  essential  part  of  religion  than 
the  traditional  church  belief.  As  an  illustra- 
tion of  his  own  views  he  tells  of  a  minister  in 
the  Canton  of  Zurich  who  once  on  a  Christ- 
mas Day,  after  the  communion  service,  step- 
ping out  of  the  church,  saw  a  flock  of  hungry 
crows  sitting  on  the  cloister  walls,  and  moved 
by  pity  for  the  starving  creatures,  fed  them 
with  the  holy  bread.  Of  course  the  commu- 
nity was  scandalized  and  the  kindly  man  lost 
his  ministry.  He  found,  however,  a  refuge  in 
a  little  country  parish  in  the  Black  Forest ;  and 
as  this  village  is  near  to  where  the  two  young 
men  are  wandering,  they  decide  to  make  a  de- 
scent upon  him,  chiefly  in  the  hope  of  a  good 
supper  and  a  good  glass  of  wine  at  his  table. 

In  the  following  scenes  we  come  to  know 
this  heretical  theologian  himself,  Lux  by  name. 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       313 

He  is  a  man  to  whom  nothing  human  is  for- 
eign, a  passionate  lover  of  nature,  a  friend  of 
beast  and  plant,  a  delver  in  old  books,  steeped 
in  Jewish  and  early  Christian  legend  and  in 
Gnostic  thought,  in  spite  of  his  advancing 
years  of  a  fiery,  explosive,  thoroughly  artistic 
temper — altogether  a  most  lovable  and  unique 
personality.  He  is  just  coming  back  from  an 
evening  walk,  very  much  wrought  up  over  a 
sight  which  would  perhaps  have  seemed  trivial 
to  most  men,  which  to  him,  however,  seems 
of  tragic  import.  He  had  been  reveling  in  the 
quiet  and  calm  of  the  sunset,  all  nature  seemed 
to  him  at  harmony  with  itself,  when  he  is  sud- 
denly awakened  from  his  dreams  by  a  pitiful 
squeal  at  the  wayside  ;  his  own  pet  dog,  Prince, 
has  been  chasing  a  field  mouse  and  bitten  her 
to  death.  The  bleeding  little  thing  lies  on  the 
ground  dying;  and  dying  gives  birth  to  a  lit- 
ter of  young  ones.  This  sight  of  purposeless 
cruelty,  of  guiltless  suffering,  of  a  life  being  sac- 
rificed while  giving  way  to  a  new  life,  arouses  in 
the  old  minister  all  his  latent  moral  indignation. 
What  kind  of  a  world  is  it  in  which  such  things 
are  commonplace  events  ?  What  kind  of  a  God 
is  it  who  permits  such  things  ?  In  vain  does 
his  sister  remind  him  that  in  saner  and  more 


314     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

composed  states  of  mind  he  himself  is  wont 
to  think  of  God  as  being  within,  not  above 
the  world,  as  striving,  struggling,  suffering 
in  common  with  it.  In  vain  does  she  call  to 
help  the  serene  equanimity  of  Spinoza,  the 
contemplative  calmness  of  the  Hindoos;  he 
does  not  want  to  contemplate  or  to  reason  ; 
he  wants  to  despise,  to  protest,  to  castigate. 
His  clerical  life  seems  to  him  now  a  mockery 
—  away  with  the  ministry,  away  with  sermon- 
izing !  Doing,  healing  —  that  is  the  only  true 
kind  of  worship  ! 

Now  the  sister,  in  order  to  divert  him,  re- 
calls to  his  mind  his  favorite  relaxation  of 
former  years  whenever  the  cares  of  the  parish 
or  religious  scruples  were  worrying  him  :  the 
stage  of  shadow  pantomimes  which  of  many  a 
winter  evening  his  fancy  used  to  people  with 
heroes  of  sacred  or  profane  legend.  With 
youthful  enthusiasm  he  enters  upon  her  sug- 
gestion to  perform  such  a  play  now  ;  and  since 
the  two  theological  students  just  then  appear 
at  the  house,  he  decides  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment  to  give  to  them  his  views  on  God 
and  the  world  in  this  semi-dramatic  form. 
After  supper,  while  the  gentlemen  are  smok- 
ing in  the  study  and  conversing  with  Fraulein 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       315 

Esther,  Prince  lying  at  their  feet  with  a  face  as 
innocent  and  devout  as  though  he  had  never 
even  heard  of  the  killing  of  a  field  mouse, 
Lux  retires  to  his  little  puppet  stage,  and  soon 
he  is  heard  from  behind  the  curtain  announc- 
ing to  his  audience  the  title  of  the  play  about 
to  be  performed,  The  Saint  and  the  Beasts,  a 
Biblical  Mystery.  Here  the  prelude  ends. 
From  the  parsonage  in  the  Black  Forest  we 
are  now  transported  to  the  desert  on  the  shores 
of  the  Dead  Sea,  and  to  the  end  of  the  book 
we  remain  in  the  sphere  of  a  fantastic  Orien- 
tal animal  life  and  of  ancient  Jewish  folk-lore. 
The  first  scene  is  on  a  rocky  ledge  over- 
looking the  desert.  A  lioness,  her  cub,  and  a 
jackal  are  lying  in  wait  for  prey,  and  con- 
versing with  each  other.  How  they  hate  and 
fear  and  despise  human  kind !  The  jackal  tells 
with  great  relish  of  a  ravine  near  by  which  in 
the  time  of  his  great-grandfather  was  heaped 
full  with  human  carcasses  —  the  aftermath  of 
a  batfle  between  the  Maccabeans  and  the  sons 
of  Iambri.  With  a  mixture  of  rage  and  ad- 
miration, the  young  lion  repeats  the  tale  of 
Samson,  the  lion-killer  and  tormenter  of  foxes. 
Then  the  conversation  turns  to  the  old  lion, 
his  father,  who  meanwhile  is  roaming  through 


316    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

the  desert  in  quest  of  blood.  In  the  midst 
of  this,  the  low  roar  of  the  lion  himself  is 
heard.  He  is  returning  from  his  expedition, 
but  not  victoriously,  in  a  frame  of  mind  en- 
tirely different  from  his  usual  temper.  He  has 
met  a  man,  but  he  has  not  dared  to  attack 
him! — a  frail,  ascetic-looking  man  with  a 
face  that  seemed  surrounded  by  the  radiance 
of  the  sun  ;  and  he  looked  at  the  lion  fearlessly 
and  kindly  and  passed  by  as  if  lost  in  thought! 
Who  is  he,  and  what  is  he,  this  strange,  de- 
fenseless, and  all-conquering  being?  What  is 
his  errand  in  the  wilderness  ? 

In  the  next  scene  we  hear  more  about  him, 
from  the  mouth  of  Azazel,  the  desert  demon 
of  ancient  Jewish  tradition.  In  the  apocry- 
phal book  of  Enoch  and  similar  works,  Azazel 
is  identified  with  Satan,  he  is  the  leader  of  the 
rebellious  giants  that  rise  against  the  Lord,  and 
he  is  finally  bound  by  the  archangel  Raphael  to 
the  rocks,  to  await  in  fetters  the  day  of  judg- 
ment. Widmann  has  evidently  drawn  from 
this  apocryphal  Jewish  literature,  but  he  has 
modified  the  conception  of  Azazel  and  adapted 
it  to  the  central  conflict  of  his  whole  poem, 
the  struggle  between  the  flesh  and  the  spirit. 
Azazel  is  to  him  a  gigantic,  monstrous  being, 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       317 

the  very  incarnation  of  the  horror  and  the 
awfulness  of  wild  nature;  but  he  also  repre- 
sents the  irresistible,  untamed  forces  of  prim- 
itive life,  the  rugged  natural  instinct  not  yet 
"  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought." 
He,  too,  is  agitated  by  Jesus'  appearance  in  the 
wilderness.  He  feels  instinctively  that  Jesus 
has  retired  to  it  in  order  to  gather  strength  in 
the  solitude  for  his  work  among  men,  and 
this  work  Azazel  fears.  He  fears  that  humanity 
is  on  the  point  of  what  he  sarcastically  calls  "a 
great  boost,"  a  spiritual  upheaval. 

Das  rote  Blut  verdunnen  und  verwassern, 
Vertilgen  unser  flammend  Element, 
Den  starken  Leib  in  kranken  Geist  verbessern, 
Kurz,  alles  dampfen  was  in  Freude  brennt, 
Das  ist  die  Absicht,  wenn  ich's  recht  verstehe; 
Die  schone,  hitz'ge  Dime,  diese  Welt, 
Wird,  wenn  ich  zeitig  nicht  zum  Rechten  sehe, 
Zum  Bleichsucht-siechen  Nonnchen  mir  entstellt. 

To  prevent  this  "  watering  of  life's  warm 
blood,"  this  "improving  of  healthy  bodies 
into  feeble  minds,"  this  "changing  of  the  gay 
Lady  World,  to  an  anaemic  nun,"  he  consid- 
ers his  satanic  duty ;  and  he  sets  about  to 
block  the  way  of  the  spiritual  reformer. 

His  first  thought  is  of  Lilith,  the  archtemp- 


3i8     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

tress  of  Jewish  popular  lore.  He  lifts  his 
mighty  voice  to  call  her.  It  is  a  long  time 
before  she  appears ;  for  she  has  spent  the  night 
in  Jerusalem  hovering  about  the  sleeping 
Salome  and  whispering  voluptuous  thoughts 
into  her  ear.  But  at  last  she  alights  from  a 
cloud  before  her  master  and  asks  for  his  com- 
mands. He  bids  her  to  tempt  Jesus  with  her 
charms ;  but  to  his  great  disgust  he  must  hear 
that  she  has  already  tried  to  seduce  him,  that 
in  the  noonday  glare  of  the  desert  she  has  un- 
veiled her  beauty  before  him.  But  Jesus  has 
looked  at  her  with  a  dreamy,  far-away,  pitying 
glance ;  and  the  words  that  fell  from  his  lips, 
"  Thou  poor  erring  spirit,"  have  not  only  dis- 
armed her  entirely,  but  even  planted  a  longing 
for  sinlessness  and  purity  in  her  heart.  So 
Azazel  must  think  of  some  other  means  of 
leading  Jesus  astray. 

Before  we  hear  of  this  attempt,  the  poet  in- 
troduces an  irresistibly  humorous  intermezzo 
of  animal  life,  drawn  from  the  Jewish  ritual 
and  satirizing  formalistic  views  of  religion.  A 
herd  of  wild  goats  are  quietly  grazing  on  the 
grassy  slope  of  an  oasis,  when  they  are  suddenly 
alarmed  by  the  sight  of  an  animal  galloping  at 
break-neck  speed  towards  them  through  the 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       319 

desert  At  first  sight  they  think  it  to  be  some 
new  strange  beast  of  prey;  they  are  therefore 
greatly  relieved  when  at  nearer  view  it  turns 
out  to  be  a  goat  like  themselves.  "  Ah,  chil- 
dren," calls  out  their  leader,  Queen  Melka, 
"  a  false  alarm  !  The  same  old  story  again  ; 
another  scapegoat !  Apparently  he  does  n't 
know  what  good  luck  his  misery  has  brought 
him."  Now  the  unfortunate  fugitive  has  reached 
the  herd,  he  rages  in  frenzy  through  their  midst, 
warning  them  not  to  touch  him,  not  to  come 
near  him  :  — 

"  My  breath  brings  pestilence !  A  curse  "  — 

"  What  curse  ?  " 

"  I  am  the  scapegoat !  " 

"Is  that  all?" 

"Ah,  but  you  don't  know"  — 

"  Oh,  yes,  we  do.  The  same  stupid  affair 
happens  over  again  every  year.  But  if  it  eases 
your  mind,  let 's  have  it."  And  now  the  poor, 
terrified  beast  blurts  out  the  whole  story  of  the 
Jewish  day  of  atonement,  —  how  he  and  his 
brother  had  been  led  to  the  altar,  how  the  lot 
was  cast  over  them,  how  the  high  priest  drew 
his  knife  and  sacrificed  the  brother,  and  how 
he  then  pronounced  the  curse  upon  himself, 
that  terrible,  frightful  curse  fraught  with  the 


320     GERMAN   IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

sins  of  all  Israel  and  winding  up  with  the  com- 
mand, "  Away  with  thee,  away  to  the  desert, 
to  the  demon  Azazel !  "  This  whole  tragic 
story  produces  no  other  effect  upon  the  lis- 
teners except  that  of  mild  amusement  over  the 
gullibility  of  the  poor,  frenzied  victim  who  takes 
the  curse  so  seriously.  They  congratulate  him 
for  having  escaped  this  murderous,  savage  race 
of  men  ;  they  assure  him  that  scapegoats  are 
particularly  welcome  in  their  midst  —  "We 
like  goats  with  a  past!"  —  they  introduce 
him  to  a  scapegoat  of  former  years,  who  now 
leads  a  most  jolly  and  enviable  bachelor-exis- 
tence among  them  ;  in  fine,  the  tragedy  ends 
as  a  satyr-play  of  exultant,  effervescent  gayety. 
From  this  truly  Erasmian  farce,  a  farce  lift- 
ing weighty  moral  questions  into  the  realm  of 
sovereign  playful  fancy,  we  return  to  Azazel's 
attempts  against  Jesus.  Azazel,  as  we  saw  be- 
fore, wishes  to  prevent  Jesus  from  collecting 
himself  in  the  wilderness,  from  gaining  certi- 
tude of  mind  and  firmness  of  purpose  for  his 
spiritual  task.  The  attempt  to  seduce  him  by 
sensual  charms  has  failed.  Will  it,  perhaps,  be 
possible  to  lead  him  astray  by  entangling  him 
in  the  animal  world  ?  If  he  is  made  to  see  the 
whole  tragedy  of  animal  life,  its  blind  appe- 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       321 

tites,  its  relentless  cruelty,  its  horrible  selfish- 
ness, and,  alongside  with  this,  its  dumb  suf- 
fering, its  quiet  steadfastness,  its  faithfulness 
to  instinct,  its  defenselessness,  its  submission 
to  Fate,  will  not  this  sight  absorb  his  sym- 
pathy to  such  an  extent  as  to  make  him  forget 
his  mission  to  mankind?  Will  he  not  fritter 
away  his  strength  in  a  vain  effort  to  help  dumb 
creation  ?  Will  he  not  be  distracted  and  be- 
wildered by  the  nameless  woe  of  all  existence 
and  despair  to  accomplish  anything  for  the 
betterment  of  the  world  ?  Will  he  not,  in 
short,  fail  to  find  in  the  wilderness  what  he 
has  come  to  seek,  spiritual  power  and  courage? 
Will  he  not  return  from  it  depressed  and  dis- 
pirited, not  any  longer  a  moral  enthusiast,  but 
a  skeptic  and  a  cynic  ?  Thus,  perhaps,  we  may 
formulate  the  motives  which  induce  Azazel  to 
tempt  Jesus  by  endowing  him  with  the  gift  of 
understanding  the  language  of  the  beasts. 

I  frankly  confess  that  the  means  by  which 
this  gift  is  bestowed  upon  Jesus  —  the  magic 
ring  of  King  Solomon,  which  Azazel  forces 
Lilith  to  fetch  from  the  bottom  of  Lake  Siloah 
—  seems  to  me  the  one  point  in  Widmann's 
poem  which  it  is  hard  to  accept  as  a  truly 
poetic  symbol  of  spiritual  truths.    It  seems  too 


322    GERMAN   IDEALS   OF   TO-DAY 

artificial  and  too  fantastic  a  device  to  satisfy 
our  imagination.  The  change  brought  about 
thereby  in  Jesus'  state  of  mind,  in  his  under- 
standing of  animal  existence,  is  too  sudden 
to  be  entirely  convincing.  But  granting  the 
poet's  premises,  accepting  this  device  for  open- 
ing Jesus'  ear  to  the  voices  of  the  wilderness, 
we  cannot  help  being  impressed  with  the  effect 
which  it  has  upon  the  further  psychological 
development. 

Jesus  has  been  roaming  through  the  desert 
without  receiving  an  answer  to  his  inner  ques- 
tionings. The  "  Great  Silence  "  is  oppressive 
to  him  ;  he  longs  for  a  word  of  enlightenment, 
for  a  message  of  sympathy  from  this  vast  mys- 
terious world  about  him.  Now  the  magic  gift 
unlocks  to  him  the  secrets  of  animal  life ;  he 
stands  and  listens,  eagerly,  breathlessly.  And 
what  does  he  hear  ?  A  tale  of  endless,  cease- 
less war  and  murder,  of  fear,  of  anguish,  of 
oppression,  of  fierce  passion  and  savage  bru- 
tality. The  scenes  of  wild  humor  and  fantastic 
grotesqueness  by  which  this  side  of  animal 
existence  is  revealed  to  him,  it  would  be  a 
hopeless  task  to  reproduce  in  ordinary  prose. 
Perhaps  the  most  grimly  humorous  among 
them  is  a  quarrel  of  a  flock  of  ravens  over  the 


CONTEMPORARY   LETTERS       323 

dead  body  of  a  rabbit,  which  finally  leads  to 
a  compromise  dinner,  during  which  one  of  the 
guests,  an  old  raven  that  has  come  from  the 
North,  delights  his  table  companions  with  a 
gruesome  account  of  the  toothsome  corpses 
of  the  Roman  army  scattered  over  the  battle- 
field of  the  Teutoburg  Forest.  The  impor- 
tant thing  in  all  these  scenes  is  that  their  effect 
upon  Jesus  is  just  the  reverse  from  the  one 
hoped  for  by  Azazel.  I  nstead  of  being  brought 
to  a  low  level  of  moral  energy,  instead  of  be- 
ing dragged  down  spiritually  and  of  measuring 
human  life  by  the  standard  of  animal  instincts, 
Jesus  is  stimulated  to  a  wider  and  freer  hu- 
manity by  this  very  sight  of  beastly  appetite 
and  avidity.  He  comes  to  recognize  that  ani- 
mal life  is  bound  up  by  instinct,  that  herein 
lie  both  its  doom  and  its  redemption,  its  hor- 
ror and  its  beauty.  He  comes  to  see  that  sin 
has  no  part  in  it,  that  it  is  exempt  from  re- 
morse and  mental  agony,  and  that  in  so  far  it 
may  stand  to  man  as  an  image  of  the  ideal 
life.  But  he  also  sees  that  its  sufferings  are 
beyond  the  pale  of  human  interference ;  that 
all  we  can  bestow  upon  beasts  is  friendly  sym- 
pathy and  kindly  forbearance.  He  learns  the 
great  lesson  that  acceptance  of  reality,  of  life 


324    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

in  all  its  infinite  variations  and  degrees  of  con- 
sciousness, is  the  only  sound  basis  for  higher 
spiritual  striving. 

Thus  inwardly  fortified,  he  is  able,  on  the 
mount  of  temptation,  to  face  the  Evil  One 
himself,  to  defy  Azazel's  final  attempt  to  di- 
vert him  from  his  human  mission  by  illusive 
phantoms  of  his  divinity.  And  at  last  —  here 
the  poet  combines  once  more  Biblical  and  Apo- 
cryphal tradition — he  is  surrounded  by  the 
heavenly  host ;  he  receives  from  them  joyous 
messages  of  a  living,  glorious,  ever-struggling, 
ever-striving  universe ;  and  he  is  led  by  the 
archangels  toward  a  life  of  loving,  self-sacri- 
ficing, sin-combating  activity. 

It  is  self-evident  that  this  brief  and  inade- 
quate account  of  a  world-embracing  poem  can- 
not in  any  sense  do  justice  either  to  its  artistic 
worth  or  to  its  spiritual  significance.  But 
enough  perhaps  has  been  said  to  make  clear 
that  here  there  has  come  to  light  a  work  of 
genius,  a  work  which  will  have  a  permanent 
place  in  the  history  of  literature.  Unique  and 
incomparable  as  it  is,  it  nevertheless  suggests 
a  number  of  other  attempts  to  express  in  po- 
etic symbols  the  modern  view  of  the  universe. 
There  are  accents  in  it  of  Goethe's  Faust,  of 


CONTEMPORARY    LETTERS       325 

Ibsen's  Brand  and  Peer  Gynt,  of  Hauptmann's 
Versunkene  Glocke.  It  is  a  most  welcome  and 
convincing  proof  of  the  fact  that  modern 
thought  is  not  antagonistic  to  art,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  has  enlarged  her  sphere  by  open- 
ing the  eyes  of  mankind  to  the  mystery  and 
sacredness  of  all  forms  of  life. 


VII 

THE    FUTURE    OF    GERMAN 
LITERATURE 


THE    FUTURE    OF    GERMAN 
LITERATURE 

Prophecy  is  a  dangerous  and  on  the  whole  an 
unprofitable  occupation.  If  I  nevertheless  ven- 
ture to  supplement  these  fragmentary  sketches 
of  German  letters  of  to-day  and  of  the  past 
by  casting  a  brief  glance  into  the  future  of 
German  literature,  I  do  so  because  the  present 
condition  of  literary  production  in  Germany 
is  such  that  the  question  of  its  probable  out- 
come in  permanent  achievement  forces  itself 
upon  us  with  more  than  ordinary  emphasis 
and  intensity.  It  is  the  principal  features  of 
the  present  situation  and  their  promise  for 
the  future  which  I  wish  briefly  to  analyze. 

Among  the  symptoms  betokening  the  ap- 
proach of  a  new  era  of  true  literary  greatness, 
I  would  name  in  the  first  place  the  extraordi- 
nary receptivity  of  the  German  public  for  se- 
rious art.  Foreign  observers  of  contemporary 
Germany  often  make  the  mistake  of  assuming 
that  our  national  vitality  is  absorbed  by  indus- 
trial enterprise  and  commercial  expansion.   As 


330     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  country  where 
literary  and  artistic  questions  are  so  eagerly 
discussed  and  evoke  such  serious  consideration 
among  the  broad  mass  of  average  people  as 
in  the  Germany  of  to-day.  Wherever  you  go, 
you  find  the  same  proofs  of  this  intense  interest 
in  higher  things.  In  the  lecture-rooms  of  the 
universities  you  see,  week  in,  week  out,  hun- 
dreds of  hearers,  often  comprising  besides  the 
regular  students  a  large  contingent  of  officers, 
artists,  litterateurs,  and  men  of  affairs,  listening 
with  unflagging  attention  to  learned  discourses 
on  the  modern  drama,  on  Wagner,  on  Nietz- 
sche, and  similar  subjects.  In  going  over  the 
weekly  repertoire  of  the  principal  theatres  in 
any  of  the  larger  German  cities,  you  will  find 
that  the  serious  drama — Shakspere,  Goethe, 
Schiller,  Ibsen,  Hauptmann  —  altogether  pre- 
dominates, and  night  after  night  you  will  find 
the  playhouses  crowded  by  the  same  thought- 
ful, discriminating,  and  responsive  audiences. 
In  the  fine  arts,  a  new  work  by  Rodin,  by 
Klinger,  by  Sinding  is  an  event  stirring  the 
imagination  and  the  critical  faculty  of  large 
masses  of  Germans,  to  an  extent  quite  unknown 
in  America  or  England  ;  and  such  questions 
as  the  restoration  of  Heidelberg  Castle  or  the 


FUTURE  OF  GERMAN  LITERATURE  331 

Hohkonigsburg  lead  to  antagonisms  and  in- 
criminations in  the  newspapers  and  magazines 
hardly  less  heated  than  debates  in  the  Reichs- 
tag brought  on  by  an  interpellation  of  Bebel 
or  some  other  Socialist.  Even  the  acrimoni- 
ousness  and  cliquishness  of  literary  and  artistic 
criticism,  of  which  I  spoke  in  a  preceding 
paper,  may  in  a  sense  be  considered  a  concomi- 
tant phenomenon  of  a  highly  developed,  quickly 
pulsating  imaginative  life.  And  whatever  one 
may  think  of  the  artistic  predilections  and 
antipathies  of  the  present  Emperor,  it  is  clear 
that  he  is  in  this  respect  also,  as  in  so  many 
others,  a  typical  representative  of  the  eager,- 
restless  striving  of  modern  Germany  for  high 
achievement  and  of  its  remarkable  responsive- 
ness to  ideal  impulses. 

There  is  a  comic  element  in  the  hypnotiza- 
tion  of  the  masses  by  a  man  of  genius.  We 
cannot  help  realizing  this  when  we  think  of 
some  of  the  names  which  during  the  last  thirty 
years  have  succeeded  each  other  in  forcing 
themselves  upon  the  imagination  of  the  average 
German.  First,  in  the  seventies,  the  educated 
Philistine  had  to  swear  by  Wagner's  Wotan 
and  Rhine-maidens  ;  next,  he  had  to  discover 
a  kinship  between  his  own  humdrum  exist- 


332    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF  TO-DAY 

ence  and  the  fantastic  and  reckless  beings  of 
Bocklin's  art;  then,  in  the  eighties,  he  had  to 
adapt  himself  to  the  rhapsodies  of  Nietzsche's 
Zarathustra,  and  at  the  same  time  come  to 
terms  with  the  tantalizing,  quizzical  figures  of 
Ibsen.  Then,  Hauptmann  and  Sudermann 
tossed  him  back  and  forth  between  the  misery 
of  every-day  life  and  the  ecstasy  of  a  somewhat 
artificial  fairy  world.  And  at  present,  if  we 
may  trust  the  ponderous  articles  written  by 
German  critics  on  Bernard  Shaw  and  Oscar 
Wilde,  he  has  the  choice  of  discovering  a  new 
and  exalted  view  of  society  in  the  former  or 
a  spiritualized  conception  of  the  universe  in 
the  latter.  Truly,  it  is  not  an  easy  task  for 
the  educated  Philistine  to  keep  up  with  himself, 
particularly  if  he  has  a  conscience  and  takes 
himself  seriously. 

Fortunately,  the  influence  of  great  men  is 
not  confined  to  this  hypnotization  of  feebler 
minds  ;  its  best  part  consists  in  this,  that  it 
awakens  activity  in  others.  There  can  be 
little  doubt  that  this  has  been  the  prevailing 
effect  of  the  rapid  succession  of  eminent 
men  who  during  the  present  generation  have 
swayed  the  imagination  of  the  German  people. 
Wagner    has    created    a  Wagnerian    state  of 


FUTURE  OF  GERMAN  LITERATURE  333 

mind  in  thousands  of  people  without  mak- 
ing them  a  helpless  prey  to  his  bombast  and 
pompousness.  Nietzsche  has  opened  the  eyes 
of  thousands  to  the  delights  of  pure  intellec- 
tuality without  imparting  to  them  his  own 
irrational  hatred  of  historical  tradition.  Each 
and  all  of  the  men  who  since  the  middle  of 
the  seventies  have  been  leaders  in  literary  and 
artistic  matters  in  Germany,  have  helped  to  free 
the  mind,  to  dispel  phantoms,  to  loosen  the 
spiritual  soil,  to  sow  the  seeds  of  a  stronger  and 
nobler  life.  Surely,  this  is  a  state  of  things  favor- 
able to  the  development  of  a  great  literature. 

Is  there  ground  for  the  belief  that  we  are  in 
the  midst  of  the  beginnings  of  a  great  litera- 
ture at  this  very  moment  ? 

Statistics  are  of  little  value  in  literary  study. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  worth  while  to  note  that 
the  numerical  output  —  so  to  speak  —  of  con- 
temporary German  literature  in  works  of  high 
aim  and  more  than  temporary  interest  has 
been  truly  remarkable.  This  is  particularly 
true  of  the  drama,  the  form  of  literature  which 
in  every  respect  stands  in  the  foreground  of 
public  attention  and  seems  to  express  the  sur- 
charged and  explosive  condition  of  the  Ger- 
man mind  most  fittingly.     For  the  last  two 


334    GERMAN    IDEALS   OF   TO-DAY 

decades  not  a  year  has  passed  without  the 
addition  of  some  drama  of  serious  import  and 
spiritual  significance  to  the  German  stage.  If 
most  of  these  dramas  have  superseded  each 
other,  if  Wilbrandt's  Meister  von  Palmyra  or 
Fulda's  'Talisman  or  Wildenbruch's  Heinrich 
und  Heinrichs  Geschlecht  have  practically  dis- 
appeared from  the  footlights  and  seem  to  us 
now  almost  to  belong  to  a  different  epoch 
from  ours,  if  even  each  new  work  by  Haupt- 
mann  or  Sudermann  or  Halbe  or  Schnitzler  or 
Hofmannsthal  crowds  out  for  the  time  being 
most  of  its  predecessors  from  the  public  eye, 
this  is  simply  one  more  proof  of  the  fever- 
ish, restless  activity  now  going  on  in  dramatic 
production. 

But  it  is  not  in  the  drama  alone  where  this 
intensity  and  fervor  of  modern  German  life 
manifest  themselves.  Lyric  poetry  and  the 
novel  have  come  to  be  equally  adequate  mani- 
festations of  the  national  striving  for  the  ideal. 
Indeed,  German  lyric  and  reflective  poetry, 
which  in  the  seventies  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury seemed  to  have  dwindled  down  to  a  mere 
pastime  of  clever  versifiers,  is  now  swelling  on 
again  to  a  full-sounding  chorus  of  genuine 
passion  and  power.    The  tempestuous  Lilien- 


FUTURE  OF  GERMAN  LITERATURE  335 

cron,  the  contemplatively  caustic  Widmann, 
the  weighty  Richard  Dehmel,  the  nobly  sen- 
suous Isolde  Kurz,  the  rich  and  luxuriant 
Stefan  George,  the  dreamy,  melodious  Hugo 
von  Hofmannsthal  —  to  single  out  only  a  few 
voices  from  this  strong-lunged  and  voluminous 
chorus,  —  how  clearly  there  rings  out  in  them 
the  deep  human  feeling  for  the  beauty,  the 
fascination,  the  mysteriousness,  the  tragedy, 
and  the  grandeur  of  life ;  how  strongly  there 
betrays  itself  in  them  the  eternal  longing  of 
man  for  a  wider  horizon,  a  firmer  faith,  a  truer 
knowledge,  a  heightened  personality,  a  better 
social  order.  As  to  contemporary  German 
novels,  I  think  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
in  most  of  them  there  is  an  extraordinary  de- 
gree of  vitality,  of  earnestness,  of  impetuous 
desire  for  going  to  the  root  of  things,  for  re- 
vealing the  essence  of  character.  In  the  best 
of  them  —  the  works  of  Wilhelm  von  Polenz, 
Ricarda  Huch,  Helene  Bohlau,  Clara  Viebig, 
Frieda  von  Biilow,  Hermann  Hesse,  Thomas 
Mann,  Wilhelm  Hegeler  —  there  is  added  to 
this  an  artistic  finish  altogether  delightful.  It 
is  high  time  for  the  English-speaking  world  to 
awake  to  an  appreciation  of  this  remarkable 
outburst  of  creative  power  in  German  narrative 


336     GERMAN   IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

literature.  The  unprecedented  external  success 
of  Gustav  Frenssen's  Jbrn  Uhl  and  Hilligenlei 

—  works  which  from  the  purely  artistic  point 
of  view  are  by  no  means  representative  of 
the  best  German  achievements  in  this  genre 

—  proves  that  the  German  reading  public  is 
equal  to  the  German  authors  in  willingness  to 
cope  with  fundamental  questions  of  life;  and 
that  the  novel  has  taken  its  place  by  the  side 
of  the  drama  as  a  great  national  force. 

Contemporary  German  literature,  then,  in 
all  its  forms  has  come  to  be  once  more  what 
it  was  a  hundred  years  ago  :  a  part  of  the  in- 
nermost strivings  of  the  German  mind,  of  its 
ineradicable  longing  for  completeness  of  exist- 
ence. Whether  these  aspirations  are  going  to 
lead  or,  in  part  at  least,  have  already  led  to  a 
revival  of  that  perfection  of  literary  workman- 
ship which  distinguished  the  great  productions 
of  German  Classicism  and  Romanticism  at  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth,  it  is  probably  too  early 
to  decide.  So  much  seems  certain,  that  the 
main  trend  of  contemporary  literature  shows  a 
stronger  affinity  with  Romanticism  than  with 
Classicism. 

Obviously  Romantic  is  the  predilection  of 


FUTURE  OF  GERMAN  LITERATURE  337 

modern  German  writers  for  the  fantastic  and 
the  visionary,  for  the  world  of  dreams  and 
forebodings,  for  the  legend  and  the  fairy  tale. 
In  order  to  account  for  this  tendency  there  is 
no  need  of  taking  recourse  to  the  influence 
of  French  Symbolism.  Hauptmann's  Versun- 
kene  Glocke  and  Widmann's  Der  Heilige  und 
die  'Tiere  are  direct  descendants  of  the  period 
when  the  German  mind  was  in  search  of  the 
Blue  Flower,  when  it  longed  for  an  exist- 
ence raised  above  the  limits  of  actuality,  when 
the  whole  world  appeared  as  a  magic  garden 
of  luxuriant  wonders  and  infinite  surprises. 
We  of  to-day  feel,  as  strongly  as  did  the  con- 
temporaries of  Novalis  and  Schelling,  the 
desire  to  reach  out  into  the  sphere  of  the 
unknowable.  As  impatiently  as  they,  do  we 
beat  against  the  bolts  and  bars  of  inert  matter 
that  hem  in  our  vision ;  as  fervently  as  they, 
do  we  long  for  the  freedom  and  wide  sweep  of 
the  spirit.  It  is  this  feverish  pressing  on  to- 
ward the  spiritual,  this  abnormally  heightened 
feeling  of  the  inner  oneness  of  all  life,  this 
clairvoyant  anticipation  of  the  true  reality  lying 
back  of  the  apparent  reality,  which  give  to 
modern  German  poetry  its  most  sublimated, 
and  essentially  Romantic,  flavor. 


338     GERMAN    IDEALS    OF    TO-DAY 

No  more  distinctly  Romantic  a  poem  has 
ever  been  written  than  Hugo  von  Hofmanns- 
thal's  Der  Thor  und  der  'Tod,  with  its  wonderful 
representation  of  death  as  the  true  life-giver, 
the  great  inspirer,  the  spirit  of  fulfillment  whose 
sacred  and  mysterious  power  is  felt  in  every 
solemn  and  portentous  moment  of  existence. 

Wenn  in  der  lauen  Sommerabendfeier 

Durch  goldne  Luft  ein  Blatt  herabgeschwebt, 

Hat  dich  mein  Wehen  angeschauert 

Das  traumhaft  um  die  reifen  Dinge  webt. 

Wenn  Ueberschwellen  der  Gefuhle 

Mit  warmer  Flut  die  Seele  zitternd  fullte, 

Wenn  sich  im  plotzlichen  Durchzucken 

Das  Ungeheure  als  verwandt  enthiillte, 

Und  du,  hingebend  dich  im  grossen  Reigen, 

Die  Welt  empfingest  als  dein  eigen, 

In  jeder  wahrhaft  grossen  Stunde, 

Die  schauern  deine  Erdenform  gemacht, 

Hab'  ich  dich  angeriihrt  im  Seelengrunde 

Mit  heiliger,  geheimnisvoller  Macht  — 

Do  not  these  words,  spoken  by  Death  in 
Hofmannsthal's  symbolical  drama,  take  us 
back  to  Hardenberg's  Hymns  to  Night?  Do 
they  not  bring  before  our  minds  the  image 
of  that  delicate  and  inspired  singer  to  whom 
the  death  of  his  beloved  one  opened  the  view 
into  an  endless  panorama  of  life,  and  to  whom 


FUTURE  OF  GERMAN  LITERATURE  339 

night  disclosed  the  mystery  of  worlds  hidden 
by  the  light  of  day  ? 

No  less  Romantic,  however,  than  this  super- 
naturalistic  reveling  in  the  infinite,  this  con- 
ception of  the  whole  world  of  the  senses  as  a 
symbol  of  the  spirit,  is  the  intense,  sometimes 
extreme,  naturalism  of  contemporary  Ger- 
man literature.  Symbolism  and  naturalism  are 
closely  allied  with  each  other ;  they  are  both 
symptoms  of  an  excessive  subjectivism,  of 
an  unusually  heightened,  if  not  abnormally 
strained,  inner  life.  It  is  a  mistake  to  assume 
that  the  naturalistic  artist  is  chiefly  concerned 
in  copying  the  external  forms  of  reality.  His 
desire  to  reproduce  these  forms  in  all  their 
fullness  and  variety  springs  from  the  intense, 
though  dim,  feeling  that  there  lives  a  hidden 
motive  power  in  all  these  variegated  shapes  of 
the  outer  world ;  that  even  the  most  incon- 
spicuous, the  most  fleeting,  the  most  ordinary 
and  ugly  are  parts  of  the  grand  central  force 
which  is  constantly  emitting  new  varieties  of 
beings  to  the  surface  of  life.  He  feels  himself 
akin  to  this  creative  spirit  residing  in  the  depths 
of  all  existence,  and  he  is  impelled  to  emu- 
late its  mysterious  workings  in  the  sphere  of 
art.    His   art,  therefore,  although   seemingly 


340    GERMAN    IDEALS    OF   TO-DAY 

objective,  rests,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  upon  his 
own  state  of  extreme  sensitiveness  and  divina- 
tory  perception  of  the  inner  life  of  things,  and 
is  an  expression  of  a  most  subjective  view  of 
the  world.  And  the  same  is  obviously  true  of 
the  symbolist.  He  finds  the  essence  of  things 
in  his  own  self.  Abandoning  himself  to  the 
throng  of  images  which  arise  from  within  be- 
fore him,  he  sees  in  them  the  true  reality;  the 
world  of  commonplace  reality  changes  before 
his  eyes  into  a  world  of  sublimated  substance, 
into  a  play  of  his  dreams,  a  creation  of  his  own 
being. 

It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  in  all 
epochs  of  highly  strained  nervous  activity 
these  two  apparently  conflicting  tendencies  of 
naturalism  and  symbolism  should  have  been 
found  side  by  side  with  each  other.  Conspic- 
uously was  this  the  case  during  the  decades 
when  German  Romanticism  was  at  its  height. 
Tieck's  whole  career  may  be  called  a  constant 
oscillating  between  an  airy,  fantastic  play  of 
the  imagination  and  an  attempt  to  give  flash- 
light views  —  as  it  were  —  of  the  involuntarily 
comic  existence  of  the  matter-of-fact  Philistine. 
In  Kleist's  poetic  temper  there  was  a  constant 
struggle  between  extravagant,  ecstatic  divina- 


FUTURE  OF  GERMAN  LITERATURE  341 

tion  of  a  higher  order  of  existence  and  an  in- 
exorable sense  for  the  minutest  facts  of  actual 
life.  And  Amadeus  Hoffmann,  the  master  of 
grotesquely  spookish  effects,  was  at  the  same 
time  a  master  in  the  impressionist  manner  of 
representing  the  "ewig  Gestrige  "  and  the  mo- 
notonously trivial. 

The  recrudescence,  then,  of  naturalism  in 
contemporary  German  literature  is,  fully  as 
much  as  its  symbolist  tendency,  an  unmistak- 
able sign  that  we  are  in  the  midst  of  another 
Romantic  movement,  that  we  are  agitated  by 
the  same  throbbing  desire  to  comprehend 
the  world  in  its  totality,  to  grasp  and  express 
the  inner  meaning  of  life,  which  pulsated  in 
Novalis,  the  Schlegels,  Kleist,  Uhland,  and 
Heine.  Will  the  course  of  history  be  retraced 
a  step  further  still  ?  Will  Neo-Romanticism 
ultimately  lead  us  back  to  Neo-Classicism  ? 
Are  another  Goethe  and  another  Schiller  per- 
haps in  our  very  midst  even  now  ?  These  are 
questions  which  I  am  not  bold  enough  to 
answer. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .    S    •    A 


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